Protestant Circles Research Articles

Miejsce i znaczenie protestanckich przekładów Pisma Świętego w historii polszczyzny biblijnej (zarys opisu)

The paper is an attempt at the synthetic look into this part of Polish bible translation heritage, whose integral part are the translations of the Bible in Protestant circles. The fundamental thesis of the work is based on the statement that Protestant translations of the Bible into Polish contributed substantially to its quantitative and qualitative evolution, as well as constitute one of the main sources of the development of the biblical stylistic variant of Polish. The greatest attention has been paid to the role and significance of Polish Bible translations in this process, which were made in the times of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, as well as to the attempt at indicating some links that appeared between the most important Catholic and Protestant translations of this period. The paper provides numerous references to previous views on the investigated issues, and provides a range of new suggestions, e.g. a periodization of the history of biblical Polish language, as well as indicates the need for further work in this field.

“Uma experiência interessante”: o Estado Novo português e o cristianismo holandês nas décadas de 1930 e 1940

In 1933, one year after his inauguration as prime minister of Portugal, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar managed to get a new constitution accepted, reorganising Portuguese politics, civil society, and economics on a corporatist basis. This article deals with the remarkable amount of interest that Salazar’s Estado Novo aroused in the circles of Christian political parties in the Netherlands in the late 1930s and early 1940s. My argument is that this interest had to do with the existing institutional compartmentalisation of Dutch society along politico-religious lines, known as ‘verzuiling’ or ‘pillarisation’. Some Catholic intellectuals felt that the Dutch Catholic community should not content itself with its own ‘zuil’ or ‘pillar’, but rather aspire after a reconfiguration of society in accordance with Catholic social teaching, of which the Estado Novo was an example. In Protestant circles, some considered the Estado Novo to be a paragon of an ‘organically’ organised state, thereby offering an alternative to the ‘pillarised’ segregation of the Dutch nation that they utterly detested. In addition, both Dutch Catholic and Protestant admirers of Salazar thought that the Estado Novo was based on principles that could offer both a solution to the political and economic crisis affecting the Netherlands in the 1930s and a fundament on which to reconstruct their country after the Nazi-German invasion in 1940.

Social Justice and Competing Visions of the Common Good

Social Justice and Competing Visions of the Common Good Robert G. Kennedy (bio) In 1959, two French Jesuits, Jean-Yves Calvez and Jacques Perrin published a masterful survey of the Church's teaching on economic issues, covering the papacies from Leo XIII through Pius XII. The original French title was Église et société économique ("The Church and Economic Society") but the American publisher somewhat misleadingly titled the translation The Church and Social Justice. The essays we reproduce here appeared as appendices in the original volume, but they were curiously omitted from the American translation published in 1961, even though they constituted the principal discussion of social justice in the text. Calvez and Perrin were prompted to write their essays by the confusion caused some thirty years earlier by a papal document. In 1931, [End Page 106] in the midst of the Great Depression, Pope Pius XI published Quadragesimo Anno, a major encyclical letter on economic questions. In the letter the pope introduced some new language and some new ideas to the lively Catholic conversation about social issues, but perhaps none was more provocative than his use of the term "social justice." Pius used the term eight times in the letter but, as often happens in such documents, he never explained just what he meant by it. Of course, the world noticed immediately. "Social justice" as a phrase had been in common use for some decades in secular and Protestant circles. And indeed, a number of Catholic authors had taken to using it as well. But this initial use by the pope gave it an official status that could not be ignored. However, the pressing question was: exactly what did Pius understand by the term? In secular circles, "social justice" had become a term of art among progressive economists, philosophers, and politicians, who claimed that it was a new form of justice, suitable to a new age. But here, too, the definition was fluid. These thinkers were persuaded that developed societies had reached such a level of productivity and abundance that the challenge was no longer a matter of coping with scarcity but had now become a matter of managing distribution. "Social justice," then, became the laudable and presumably realistic goal of distributing the benefits of a modern society fairly to all of its members, a state of affairs in which everyone had access to the resources necessary to support a reasonably comfortable and fulfilling life. Furthermore, the establishment of social justice was taken to be the principal goal of modern government, which alone could wield the power and assemble the resources necessary for success. This new form of justice was not a quality of persons but an attribute of the structures and institutions of society. But was something like this what the pope had in mind? If so, it would have represented a rather dramatic shift in the Church's official thinking, endorsing a greatly expanded role for the state in economic affairs. A curious thing to do when the Church was struggling against the rise of totalitarian states. Or was the pope defining [End Page 107] a new virtue for modern times, which attempted to take account of the social changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution? Some theologians, such as the American Fr. John A. Ryan, were quick to identify the pope's meaning with the progressive movement they favored. Others insisted that no shift in policy was intended. Pius himself, in a subsequent encyclical published in 1937, sought to provide some clarity by devoting several paragraphs to an application of social justice, linking it closely with the common good of the society, though this introduced confusions of its own. The controversy continued for decades, with a number of writers attempting to resolve the issue but differing from one another in their conclusions. ________ Needless to say, questions about the concrete requirements of justice have always been debated by philosophers and lawyers. However, an understanding of the nature of justice in principle had been well established since the time of Plato and Aristotle, and it has formed one of the foundations of the Catholic moral tradition. Justice can be both a virtue of persons and an...

O problema da relação entre o livre-arbítrio humano e a graça/predestinação em Agostinho em diálogo com a Modernidade/Contemporaneidade

One of the most complex issues in St. Augustine's philosophical-religious doctrine is that of the relationship between human free will and divine grace / predestination. This problem has its main expression in the controversy with the Pelagians / semi-Pelagians, who, each in their own way, believed that there is an incompatibility between the two terms. They sought to annul one of the poles of the question, arguing that the human being is free. In addition, they state thatoriginal sin in no way damaged human free will, and that, consequently, the latter can achieve perfection / salvation by his own merits, without the help of divine grace. Augustine, on the contrary, says that with original sin the “first nature” of man was damaged. Thus, human beingneeds the help of divine grace to be able to perform good actions (merits), but Augustine claimed, there is no incompatibility there, conversely, for him, what the human being has lost was the full freedom he enjoyed before sin. Now human being has only free will thatgrace will restore, giving him back his full freedom. Likewise, he argues, predestination does not nullify free will, determining man's destiny. Thus, first, man is a being created by God for himself, with no determinants for evil,and, second, as much as damaged he may be, he is keeps something of his first condition, even the tiniest one. Thus, human being is capable of say no to God's call. These questions will reverberate in the philosophical-religious discourses about the problem in Modernity / Contemporaneity, mainly in Protestant circles, which have intertwined themselves, each in their own way, between the so-called incompatibilities and compatibilities. Both seeking to substantiate their positions, often in St. Augustine. Something that he would not always agree with. Here's what we'll look at in this paper.

Zwalczanie kultu obrazów w dobie reformacji

The rejection and destruction of images, which was so characteristic of the iconoclastic movement of Eastern Christianity, was revived in the Reformation period. The theoretical foundation for this movement was provided by Erasmus of Rotterdam and it was later fully developed by Martin Luther, John Calvin and their successors. This movement had its origins in theology but also there were social and even national roots (in the Netherlands). The position developed during the Reformation period seems to have made an impression on the reception of works of art by the contemporaries not only in Protestant circles but in Catholic ones as well.

Papism, Mahometism and the Tree of Heresies

The main objectives of this paper are: 1) to identify the editorial context in which appear two 16th and 17th centuries’ engravings representing the family tree of heresies, surmounted by the figures of the pope and the Ottoman sultan; 2): to explain the ideological significance of this iconographic motif; 3): to examine some signs of their reception in 17th century Protestant circles. Having located the books containing these pictures, it is concluded that: a) both reflected effectively the idea, widespread in Protestant environments, that the Catholic Church and Islam are two great heresies serving the Antichrist and developed from preexisting heretical doctrines. b) The simultaneous attack against Popery and Islam (the latter identified with the religion of the Ottoman Empire), beyond its polemical orientation, is conditioned by a millenarian mentality.

Personhood, Relational Ontology, and the Trinitarian Politics of Eastern Orthodox Thinker Christos Yannaras

ABSTRACTEastern Orthodox political theology has not received sufficient attention by the largely Protestant- and Catholic-dominated field of political theology. One of the Orthodox world's most important thinkers, Christos Yannaras, who has written extensively on politics, is relatively unknown amongst English-speaking Protestant and Catholic theological circles because his substantive work on politics is only available in Greek. This essay provides an introduction to one of Yannaras’ most important works on political theology, The Inhumanity of Right, which has not been translated into English. Yannaras approaches politics through his person-centric anthropology and relational ontology, viewing the purpose and goal of politics as “authentic existence” in communion with the Trinitarian God. The essay seeks to demonstrate, via Yannaras’ political thought, that Orthodox theologians bring a unique perspective to common political problems and challenges and that the field of political theology would be enriched from a deeper engagement with Orthodox political theology.

Prítomnosť češtiny na Slovensku a aspekt spisovnosti

Abstract The paper aims at giving a retrospective view of the presence of Czech in Slovakia through prism of the concepts language situation, communication situations and standardness. Within the conditions of the feudal heterogeneity of the Hungarian Monarchy and without any distinct cultural and political centre of the Slovaks, in a situation of considerable dialectal variety, the Czech language fulfilled the role of a comprehensible and within the whole society (among educated Slovaks) valid and relatively unified written form of the “local language” (lingua vernacula). In the 14th and the 15th centuries this Czech got only relatively little Slovakized. During the 16th and the 17th centuries two mutually overlapping tendencies of the development of the written language of the Slovaks were being formed: 1. Slovakized Czech, or a Slovak-version Czech, and 2. Regional Variants of Cultural Slovak. Both tendencies found their place in the Catholic as well as in the Protestant environment. In the 2nd half of the 18th century, with continuation into the beginnings of the 19th century, two directions that started to be formed already in the previous period, became crystalized: 1. Under the influence of the progressing re-Catholicization, the Slovakized Czech of the Protestants undertook the direction from diglossia towards “pure” Czech (at least in the sense of an intention), and the Protestant circles unequivocally accepted it as their standard language, sometimes denoting it as reč československá (Czechoslovak language) or českoslovenčina (the Czechoslovak); 2. In the Catholic environment, the cultural Western Slovak of the southern type and called bernolákovčina (Bernolák‘s Slovak) was codified, with the status of an autonomous standard language – a development away form diglossia towards Slovak. It was a period of two standard languages to which Štúr’s codification of Slovak put an end. His codification was based on the northern Central Slovak dialects, and after its modification in the so called opravená slovenčina (“corrected Slovak”) it was accepted by the representatives of both confessions.

The motets of Jacob Handl in inter-confessional Silesian liturgical practice / Moteti Jacobusa Handla v medkonfesionalni liturgični praksi v Šleziji

Numerous works by Jacob Handl – Gallus, especially manuscripts dating from before his music was printed in Prague, are connected with certain Silesian towns where he spent time in his youth. These compositions clearly reflect liturgical practice of the time. Thanks to characteristics of the composer’s style they fell into into a category of “classic” repertory that was much valued in the liturgical practice of the period in Silesia, in Catholic as well as in Protestant circles. Handl’s motets found many uses, and because of their popularity came to form a cornerstone of the institutionally accepted Renaissance repertory of figural music.

Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon by Bo Karen Lee (review)

Reviewed by: Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon by Bo Karen Lee Lisa Webster, Editor-in-Chief (bio) Sacrifice and Delight in the Mystical Theologies of Anna Maria van Schurman and Madame Jeanne Guyon. By Bo Karen Lee. Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 2014. 264 pp. $29.00. “Self-denial can ruin a person,” writes Bo Karen Lee at the start of Sacrifice and Delight, her illuminating study of the theologies of seventeenth-century mystics Jeanne Guyon and Anna Maria van Schurman. And yet, Lee wonders, how is it that self-abnegation played such an important role in the religious thinking of two such undeniably powerful women? Madame Jeanne Guyon is a figure whose reputation has, in the past twenty years or so, recovered a great deal from both the lows to which it had fallen during her own lifetime (marked by imprisonment and disgrace) as well as subsequent critical disregard. At the height of her influence, Guyon had been in the orbit of Madame de Maintenon, the second (and “secret”) wife of Louis XIV. When the coterie of duchesses who had come to admire Guyon’s teaching arranged for her to meet the up-and-coming François de Fénelon, a spiritual match was made. Fénelon was profoundly influenced by the pious widow; she became, in effect, his spiritual director, and he would be her champion in the course of the so-called Quietist controversy. This episode in French religious history centered on a pitched battle between two bishops, Fénelon and Bossuet, over some fairly subtle theological points—the limits of self-denial among them. But Bossuet made it personal, as we would say, winning the argument by condemning Guyon’s character along with her theology. Seven years in the Bastille did not dampen Guyon’s ardor for teaching, and, as Lee notes, she emerged to become influential in Protestant circles (11). [End Page 136] While Guyon’s life and thought have received recent critical attention, Anna Maria van Schurman remains practically unknown, her theology “inaccessible to those who have no working knowledge of Latin, German and Dutch” (7). Lee’s sensitive reading, along with a 40-page Appendix of translated letters and fragments, should do much to inaugurate a resurgence of interest in van Schurman’s work, especially, as Lee notes, as van Schurman was considered in her lifetime the “‘brightest star’ among the educated women of Europe” (7). A prodigy, the young Anna Maria was the first woman to be admitted to the University of Utrecht; she “exercised an uncanny command of Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, Aramaic, and Syriac”; and, as Lee sums up “to ‘have been in Utrecht without having seen Mademoiselle de Schurman was like having been to Paris without having seen the king’” (8). Nevertheless, like Guyon, van Schurman fell from favor upon embracing a spirituality that placed self-denial before any other spiritual effort: rather than an advanced mystical attainment appropriate only for an exceptional few, denial of self, in van Schurman’s understanding, was the very basis for Christian life. Lee begins by considering van Schurman’s Eukleria—a spiritual autobiography published in 1673 when the “star of Utrecht” had become a disciple of Jean Labadie and thus, by the lights of society, fallen into a kind of madness. Lee’s reading of the contrast between this work and a defense of women’s education (written some thirty years earlier) is intriguing; she shows us how van Schurman’s repudiation of her own earlier thinking figures in her new understanding, how she determines that scientia, “a lower form of knowledge” is not enough to catalyze the radical overthrow of self (34). In the following chapter, Lee deftly analyzes portions of van Schurman’s letters to the German Pietist Johann Jakob Schütz in which the theologian describes her own difficulties in trying to overcome the self, as a matter of spiritual practice—but then does relate an experience of mystical union. In Lee’s reading, self-denial becomes, for van Schurman, not so much an act of violence toward the self as a kind of surrender to divine grace, an...

Un esbozo de traducción latina de la <i>Reposta ahum</i> papel de Moisés Rafael de Aguilar

This article contains the text and Spanish translation of Johann Christoph Wolf’s (1683-1739) fragmentary draft of a Latin translation of portions of Moses Raphael d’Aguilar’s (d. 1679) Reposta ahum Papel. Wolf’s partial translation is preserved in Hamburg, Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek, Theol. 1831. The original Portuguese text is an anti-Christian work which was well known in a number of Protestant, anti-Trinitarian and atheistic circles during the eighteenth century. Its diffusion has been studied by Martin Mulsow; however, the text itself still lacks an edition.

The Temple of Peace. The Hague Peace Conferences, Andrew Carnegie and the Building of the Peace Palace (1898-1913)

The 19th-century international peace movement sprang from the reaction against the devastation and horror the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812 had wrought. It had its roots in Anglo-American nonconformist protestant circles, but quickly spread over the globe and became more pluralist and then secular. All through the century and beyond, British and American peace activists dominated the movement and set its agenda. During the later quarter of the century, the peace movement gained more political influence thanks to its alliance with the emerging discipline of international law. This was, again, particularly true for Britain, and most of all, the United States. Two major points stood out on the agenda of the ‘peace through law’ movement: disarmament and arbitration. Whereas the movement could attain very little to nothing in relation to disarmament in the years before the Great War, the movement found allies in political circles to foster the cause of arbitration. In the United States, Britain and the Latin-American Republics, arbitration moved up the agenda of foreign policy makers and diplomats after the successful Alabama Award in 1872. The Alabama Case had shown arbitration to be an appropriate instrument to manage tactical disputes among States which wanted to avoid strategic clashes. In 1899, the cause of ‘peace through law’ scored an unexpected success. The Hague Conference, which first had been called by the Russian government for reasons of high power politics, had – to a large extent thanks to the endeavours of the Russian international lawyer Fyodor Martens – been highjacked for the ‘peace through law’ agenda when these reasons dissipated. One of the main outcomes was the establishment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. In 1903, the American industrialist turned philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, made a lavish gift to build a ‘Temple of Peace’ for the Court at The Hague. It can be said, with the benefit of hindsight, that this set the destiny of The Hague as legal capital of the world in stone.

A Protestant perspective on Vatican II & 50 years: An engagement with dissent

The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) is regarded by many in Protestant circles as one of the most significant processes in ecumenical church history during the 20th century. At the time hopes were high that closer cooperation was a reality to be embraced and achieved. Concurrently, a younger generation of Roman Catholic theologians began to make their mark on the ecumenical theological scene. Their work has provided a bridge between the two ecclesiastical traditions, notwithstanding the subsequent negative response of the Roman church hierarchy. Despite important advances, recent pontificates have destroyed much of the enthusiasm and commitment to unity. This article examines the disjuncture in views regarding the outcomes of the Council and points of contact with Protestant thinking.

Growing up gay and religious. Conflict, dialogue, and religious identity strategies

Homosexuality has become a divisive issue in many religious communities. Partly because of that, individuals growing up in such a community and experiencing same sex attractions need to negotiate the messages about homosexuality with their own experiences. This paper explores the identity strategies of religious communities as the background of individual identity struggles. Following a discussion of Bauman's grammars of identity/alterity, it describes four different discourses employed in conservative protestant and evangelical circles: holiness, subjectivity, obedience, and responsibility and four modes of negotiation: Christian lifestyle, gay lifestyle, commuting (compartmentalisation), and integration. By combining an analysis of discourses on the community level with individual strategies, this narrative research helps to better understand the interactions of (group) culture and individual coping.

ARE LIBERALS AND EVANGELICALS SINGING FROM THE SAME SONG SHEET?

Characterising Liberal and Evangelical theology as positions on a continuum or spectrum is common within Protestant circles. I argue that Liberals and Evangelicals do not share a common conceptual framework but embody competing and incommensurable conceptual schemes. Liberal theology then is not a distortion of true Biblical Christianity, as is often supposed, but rather is an entirely different approach to doing theology, indeed, to seeing the world. What I hope to achieve by way of this paper is to provide a context within which to better understand both Liberal and Evangelical claims, and to offer an explanation as to why the debates between the two schools are seemingly intractable. Further, I hope to encourage Liberals and Evangelicals to pursue the difficult task of understanding each other's position so that genuine dialogue can take place.

An Outstanding Mission Work in Japan: A Case Study of the Yohan Tokyo Christ Church

It is a generally accepted view that the missionary enterprise in Japan is a very difficult task, if not an impossibility. This view, however, has been completely challenged by a church called the Yohan Tokyo Christ Church in Japan. Recently, this church has proven to be the most flourishing religious body among all the Christian institutions in Japan in both Protestant and Roman Catholic circles. How was the church birthed? How does the church run? Which methodologies does this church employ to evangelize the Japanese people? What real factors contributed to her growth? What other elements does this church need in order to foster continual development? The purpose of this article is to answer these questions in two ways: through careful analysis of primary sources concerning this church, and through direct observation of the church.

ALEXANDER GEDDES AT THE LIMITS OF THE CATHOLIC ENLIGHTENMENT

ABSTRACTIn the closing decades of the eighteenth century, Alexander Geddes (1737–1802) pressed Catholicism and the Enlightenment to the limits of their tolerance. A Catholic priest, he fled the censure of his Scottish superiors and settled in England, where he became a spokesman for the Catholic laity in their controversies with the hierarchy, and mingled in radical Protestant circles among the ‘Rational Dissenters’. In three domains, he appalled his contemporaries. First, Geddes prepared a new version of the Bible, which threatened to undermine the integrity of revelation, and offered mythopoeic accounts of the Old Testament that influenced Blake and Coleridge. Second, he embraced ‘ecclesiastical democracy’, denouncing papal and episcopal authority and proclaiming British Catholics to be ‘Protesting Catholic Dissenters’. Third, he applauded French republicanism, and adhered to the Revolution long after Edmund Burke had rendered such enthusiasm hazardous. Geddes was an extreme exponent of the Catholic Enlightenment, yet equally he was representative of several characteristic strands of eighteenth-century Catholicism, which would be obliterated in the ultramontane revanche of the following century.

Apocalyptic Religious Movements in American History

May/June 2008 · Historically Speaking 29 Apocalyptic Religious Movements in American History Stephen J. Stein Shakers number, America has been and remains a highly receptive environment for religious movements defined in some primary way by their apocalyptic messages. But the substance of those proclamations defies easy generalnation . The apocalyptic category derives from the Greek word att????????, meaning an "uncovering" or "revelation ." Apocalyptic religious movements seek to reveal or disclose that which is hidden. The primary focus of apocalyptic revelations tends to be the future or the supposed end of things. For that reason such movements usually are preoccupied with eschatological matters. Eschatology is literally concern with the "last tilings." Movements laying claim to apocalyptic insight often do so on the basis of special revelations or a unique understanding of sacred texts. Such movements in America are part of a long and rich tradition in religious history extending from ancient times to the present. America has been a fertile seedbed for such movements: some have been transplanted from abroad while others have grown out of circumstances on this continent. In the colonial era, many colonists who adopted an apocalyptic religious perspective were deeply influenced by European thinkers. Puritan ministers in New England, for example , knew the eschatological writings of English Reformation theologians who attempted to unlock prophetic mysteries in the Bible with special attention to the book of Revelation, i.e. 'The Apocalypse of St. John." They formulated ideas about the nature and timing of the millennium, the projected thousand-year personal reign of Christ on Earth that was to precede a final judgment; the identity of the Antichrist, the figure identified as the leader of the enemies of the true church; and the significance of "signs of the times," contemporary events construed as indications that the end of earthly days was fast approaching John Cotton (1584-1652), the first minister in the First Church of Boston, insisted that his congregation admit regenerate members only, a position related to his judgment that the millennium might begin in 1655. Three members of the distinguished Mather family—all Puritan ministers—employed apocalyptic reflections throughout their lifetimes. Richard Mather (1596-1669) viewed the English Civil War as potentially leading to the end of the Antichrist 's reign. Increase Mather (1639-1723) believed the return of Christ was imminent. Cotton Mather (1663-1728) was willing to set particular dates within his lifetime as the moment of Christ's return, predictions that ultimately failed to materialize and , 1830. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction LC-USZ62-13659]. therefore disappointed. Jonathan Edwards (17031758 ), a leader of the emergent evangelical movement , spent a lifetime studying the book of Revelation. On one occasion he implied that the millennium might begin in America. In 1793 his student and friend Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), another evangelical minister, thought that the millennium might begin in another 200 years or so. Virtually all Protestant clergy at the time were persuaded that the Antichrist was the pope, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. Anti-Catholicism was widespread, and the polemics between Protestants and Catholics made apocalyptic something more than ideology. Protestants also linked the figure of the Antichrist to other contemporary opponents . During King George's War (1744-48), an imperial struggle among European nations, many American Protestants viewed the conflict as an opportunity to defeat the forces of the Antichrist equated with the Catholic nations of France and Spain. Edwards declared the English victory at Cape Breton in Canada "a dispensation of providence, the most remarkable of its kind." Apocalyptic fervor provided ideological support for the Revolutionary cause during the American War for Independence. Samuel Sherwood (1703-1783), a Congregational minister in Connecticut, equated the beast in Revelation 13 with the British monarchy. Apocalyptic reflections were preached from pulpits and published in tracts and books. Eschatological ideas permeated Protestant circles, giving adherents a distinctive sense of place in the flow of world history. After 1790, the new American nation provided a supportive context for existing religious communities as well as new religious movements. The First Amendment of die Constitution prohibited religious establishment on the national level and supported free exercise of religion. As a result, religious communities enjoyed new opportunities...

Revival in the City: The Impact of American Evangelists in Canada, 1884–1914 (review)

Reviewed by: Revival in the City: The Impact of American Evangelists in Canada, 1884-1914 Tina Block Revival in the City: The Impact of American Evangelists in Canada, 1884–1914. Eric R. Crouse. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2005. Pp. 230, illus., b&w, $65 Between 1884 and the First World War, several American evangelists travelled across the border to hold revivals in Canadian cities. These campaigns are the subject of Eric Crouse's lively new study, Revival in the City. Crouse argues that American revivals, with their populist approach and conservative evangelical message, were immensely popular in English Canada during this era, particularly among the working classes. While visiting American evangelists initially drew wide support from Canadian Protestant leaders and the secular media, that support began to wane in the 1900s. By 1914, American revivalism had largely ended in Canada, eclipsed by the rise of secularization and the growing criticism of conservative evangelicalism. Drawing on reports in secular and denominational newspapers, Crouse examines the Canadian revival campaigns of five well-known American evangelists between the 1880s and 1911. Although they had varying rates of success, these revivalists shared a conservative evangelical perspective and a willingness to engage popular culture. The arrival of Dwight L. Moody in Toronto in 1884 marked the beginning of this era of revivalism. With his innovative use of popular culture, and his 'preaching of uncomplicated biblical truths' (46), Moody drew widespread support from the Protestant community, the press, and ordinary Canadians. While Moody set the stage for a surge of revivalism in Canada, his popularity was no guarantee of success for those who followed. As Crouse notes, co-evangelists Sam Jones and Sam Small experienced limited success with their Toronto campaigns of 1886–7. Jones and Small faltered because of their sensationalism, their strained relationship with the press and labour, and their weak salvation message. According to Crouse, American revivalists who preached a 'traditional evangelical message' (79), such as Reuben Torrey, drew the most support in Canada. Despite his wide appeal among the working classes, Torrey met with some disapproval in Protestant circles. This disapproval was even more evident in responses to the revivals held by J. Wilbur Chapman and his team of evangelists between 1907 and 1911. Reflecting their increasingly critical attitude towards conservative evangelicalism, Canadian Protestant leaders gradually withdrew their support from American revivalists, precipitating the end of this era of 'revival mania' in Canada. [End Page 503] Revival in the City makes a significant contribution to the historiography of evangelicalism in North America. The study of national religious patterns and traditions is and will remain important, but more attention must be paid to patterns and traditions that crossed national borders. Crouse rightly argues that with respect to religion, the Canada-US border was indeed highly permeable. He also adds to debates about the secularization thesis in Canada. Proponents of the thesis have argued that the clergy contributed to secularization by too readily accommodating popular culture. Although he does not dispute the idea of secularization, Crouse challenges the presumed link between popular culture and religious decline. He points out that popular culture methods did little to dilute the salvation message offered by American revivalists. In suggesting that American revivalism appealed especially to the working classes, Crouse adds to the growing scholarship on class and religion in North America. He joins other scholars in arguing that the working classes were alienated from the churches, but not from religion. While Crouse suggests that evangelists masculinized their message in order to appeal to working-class men, the intersections between class and gender could be further developed. Working-class men figure prominently in Revival in the City, but we are left wondering about other groups, such as working-class women and middle-class men. Throughout the text, Crouse argues that the working classes were attracted to the 'simple' (40) preaching of American evangelists. Since he relies mainly on church and secular papers, Crouse is more convincing when discussing the rhetoric of revival than the motivations of the revival participants themselves. Crouse's richly detailed study provides an important lens on American revivalism in Canada at the turn of the twentieth century. It unravels the...

Toward a Modern Belief: Modernist Protestantism and Problems of National Religion in Meiji Japan

In this article, I discuss the significance of religious liberalism and reformism of Meiji Protestantism at the turn of the twentieth century. The period, I argue, is crucial to understanding Japanese Protestantism as modernist. The survival and expansion of Christianity and its educational institutions were at stake during the nationalist and imperialist consensus in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese war. This essay focuses on the intellectual impulses of modernist Protestants, their resonance with liberal theology, and their collaboration with emerging social and cultural sciences, especially comparative studies of religion. As I demonstrate here, the interest in these two realms of knowledge was widely shared among educated elites beyond Protestant circles, contributing to Japanese Protestants' overall growth and wellbeing in the early twentieth century. KEYWORDS: Protestantism - Meiji period - liberal theology - modernism - Kanamori Tsurin - Kishimoto Nobuta (ProQuest-CSA LLC: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) Last year [1895], the entire society showed a religious Uemura Masahisa Jesus and Shakespeare are fragments of the soul, and by love I conquer and incorporate them in my own conscious domain. Ralph Waldo Emerson The beauty of Christianity is that it can sanctify all the peculiar traits that God gave to each nation. A blessed and encouraging thought that J-too is God's nation. Uchimura Kanzo For JAPANESE Protestant churches, the decade of the 1890s is often discussed as a time of struggle or hardship.1 This was in sharp contrast to the preceding phase of rapid Westernization (okashugi ...), which offered an unprecedented opportunity for the emergence of Protestantism in Meiji Japan. Crucial challenges to Protestantism came from both within and outside the churches. Within the church, the Japanese Protestants' conflict with Western missionaries intensified over the issues of their ecclesiastical autonomy and liberal theology. Significantly, the Protestant engagement of these theological and ecclesiastical issues developed in conjunction with questions of Japanese and religion that were popularly discussed in journalism and academia in the late 1890s. This ideologically charged interest in the nation's and religion became particularly acute in the aftermath of the Sino-Japanese war (1894-1895) amid the public hand-wringing over further development and expansion of an empire. At the time, many were calling for statism and morality (kokumin dotoku ...) based on the notion of chukun aikoku ... (monarchical loyalty and patriotism), which had been often pitted against Christians before the war. All established religions collaborated with the war effort, including leading Protestants who formed the Association of Christian Comrades concerning the China/Korea Question (Shin-Kan jiken Kirisutokyoto doshikai ...) in 1894, defended the cause of war, stirred up national morale, and glorified and prayed for the Imperial fortune. Nonetheless, Christianity and its foreign missionaries continued to be looked at with suspicion by state bureaucrats preparing for mixed residence with foreigners. Then after the war, the government-ordered restrictions on religious education in both public and private schools hit Protestants particularly hard. Positivistic university academics and Darwinian evolutionary theorists alike continued to disparage Christianity in particular and religion in general. Paradoxically, however, the extraordinary tension and euphoria resulting from the war proved beyond the government's control and stimulated a popular religious mindset. A leading Protestant, Uemura Masahisa ... (1857-1925), noted in 1895 that the entire Japanese society showed a strong religious tendency. Indeed fin-de-siecle Japan witnessed a number of renewed religious movements, many with Shinto origins, such as Tenrikyo and Kurozumikyo, which the government likewise looked on with suspicion, and which Christians and Protestants like Uemura dismissed as primitive chicanery, even welcoming the government's movement to suppress them. …