Religious Separatism Research Articles

Сепаратизм в политике и религии: сравнительный анализ

Scientific positions regarding the nature of political and religious separatism are analyzed. The general reasons for the emergence of separatist movements in the religious and political environment are identified. Separatism is considered not only from the point of view of the negative connotations inherent in this concept in the media environment, but also as a constructive phenomenon - a direct consequence of the active development of social relations. It must be recognized that separatism is a complex, multilayered phenomenon in religion and politics, and can have both constructive and destructive effects, leading to internal strife and social upheaval. Because of the close interaction between religion and politics, political and religious separatism have much in common. As a result, a specific kind of separatism - religious and political - is emerging.

РАЗРАБОТКА ПОКАЗАТЕЛЕЙ КАЧЕСТВА ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОГО УПРАВЛЕНИЯ В СФЕРЕ НАЦИОНАЛЬНОЙ БЕЗОПАСНОСТИ. Часть 2. Защита национальных ценностей, национальной культуры и национальной истории

In the conditions of exacerbation of religious extremism and ethnic separatism at the beginning of the 21st century, cultural diffusion and the conduct of a hybrid war against Russia, the task of protecting their own national values, national culture and national history, and improving the quality of public administration becomes especially urgent for the Russian people. The purpose of this article is to substantiate the approach to the development of indicators of the quality of public administration in the field of national security. The paper analyzes the terminology and coherence of syntactic constructions in strategic planning documents, as well as the prospects for the protection of Russian national values, national culture and national history. The results of the analysis made it possible to propose an approach to the development and the list of indicators of the quality of public administration on this issue. The proposed approach to the development of indicators of the quality of public administration in the field of national security can significantly increase the level of information and analytical support and improve the methods of state control and monitoring of the relevant indicators of ensuring national security. The approach to developing indicators of the quality of public administration in the field of national security can be used to substantiate recommendations to the leadership of our country on improving state control and monitoring of relevant indicators for ensuring national security.

Criminalization of extremism in Ukraine

Статтю присвячено проблемі визначення доцільності криміналізації екстремізму в Україні. В кримінальних кодексах ряду зарубіжних країн передбачена кримінальна відповідальність за екстремізм в різних формах: створення ектремістського формування; фінансування діяльності екстремістського формування; розповсюдження матеріалів, які містять ідеї релігійного екстремізму, сепаратизму і фундаменталізму; створення, керівництво, участь в релігійних екстремістських, сепаратистських, фундаменталістських або інших заборонених організаціях тощо. З огляду на сучасні випадки проявів крайнього екстремізму, автор вважає доцільним введення в Україні кримінальної відповідальності за створення та фінансування діяльності екстремістських організацій (угруповань).

Tajikistan Russia Relations in Emerging World Order

The relation between Tajikistan and Russia has remained strong even after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Both countries share a common perspective on various issues, such as, threat of religious fundamentalism, national separatism and cross-border terrorism which constitute the main threat to regional security, stability and development. So far as inter ethnic relation is concerned Tajikistan’s adoption of the Language Law in 1989 has slightly affected, Tajik-Russian relations. But the Tajik Government undertook some confidence building measures which included the protection of Russian speaking people’s interests by changing the language law and by granting dual citizenship to the Russian people. In the sphere of economy, though Tajik-Russian relation were badly disturbed because of the commercial and financial arrangements in Russia after the demise of the Soviet Union, still the inter regional economic links between the two countries remain. Both sides signed inter-state inter-governmental and inter-departmental documents regulating trade and economic cooperation between Tajikistan and Russia. So far as the strategic and security factor is concerned, Tajkistan totally depends upon Russia for maintaining peace and security in the region. Tajik Russia relationship is no longer based on ideological grounds, rather it is more practical and mutually beneficial in nature.

‘I Want There to be no Glass Ceiling:’ Evangelicals’ Engagements with Class, Education, and Urban Childhoods

While class has been an enduring focus for sociologists of education, there has been little focus on the interrelations between class, religion, and education, despite widespread public anxieties about faith schools potentially encouraging both social class segregation and religious separatism, which have become more pronounced as the expansion of free schools and academies in England has increased opportunities for religious bodies’ engagement in educational provision. This article explores the importance of class in relation to the intersections of religion and education through examining how an ‘open evangelical’ church engages with children in schools linked with it, drawing on eighteen months’ ethnographic fieldwork with the church, its linked schools, and other informal educational activities run by the church. Through analyzing the everyday practices through which evangelical leaders seek to affect children's lives and how they speak about their involvements with children, the article reveals the significance of class in this context, providing insight into how evangelicals’ primary aspiration in this setting is for children's ‘upward mobility’, as their ambitions are shaped through middle-class, entrepreneurial norms, in which developing a neoliberal ethic of individual self-discipline and ‘productivity’ is privileged. Through focusing on the ‘othering’ of the urban poor in these discourses, the article adds to our knowledge of the complex interrelations between evangelicalism and class, and deepens understanding of how secular neoliberal norms become interwoven with an alternative evangelical moral project of forming the self.

LOOKING FOR HOME IN THE ISLAMIC DIASPORA OF AYAAN HIRSI ALI, AZAR NAFISI, AND KHALED HOSSEINI

On November 8, 2007, Anglo-Dutch writer Ian Buruma delivered a lecture titled Radicalism in Europe.1 His claim: Muslim thinkers are the key to diffusing a potentially explosive politics of radical religious separatism in Europe. A small but powerful minority of Islamic radicals resides in Europe, according to Buruma, and they remain an unassimilated and thus, dangerous force to be reckoned with. He cites the 2004 slaying of Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, as evidence of this Islamist radicalism. Van Gogh's 2004 film Submission exposed the psychological and physical violence levied against women in Islamic societies, and it was in response to this production that Islamic-Dutch citizen, Mohammed Bouyeri murdered Van Gogh as retribution for his critique of Islam.2Buruma suggests two paths for suturing what he reads as an ever-growing divide between mainstream Europe (and the Western world at large) and its radical Islamic minority. The one lies with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (script-writer for Van Gogh's Submission). A self-proclaimed ex-Muslim, Ali represents for Buruma the radical alternative to radical Islam - renunciation. She is, thus, not the icon he would select for keeping what he calls non- violent Muslim minorities in favor of Western secular democracy3 Rather, he posits so-called thinker Tariq Ramadan as the optimal symbol of Islamic, pro- Western thought. Buruma argues that it is precisely Ramadan's embodiment of moderate Islam that makes him a sound solution to the increasingly dangerous divide between mainstream Europe and its radical Islamic minority. Where Hirsi Ali is, for Buruma, a risky figure because she renounced Islam, Ramadan represents a middle road, a pragmatic alternative that encompasses both Orthodox Islam and a pro- Western politics. Buruma champions him as the salve for an ailing political/religious situation in Europe.Just one month later, on December 7, 2007, Ayaan Hirsi Ali published an editorial in the New York Times under the title, Silent Moderates.4 She defines Islam's Moderates by invoking their opposite, the Radicals. According to Ali, the Radicals constitute proponents of Islamic justice. She cites the case of a twenty-year-old Saudi Arabian woman who was abducted and raped by several men, only to be sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes by bamboo cane. The rape-victim's crime? Mingling, or the association with a male unrelated by blood or marriage.5 Saudi Arabia's enforcement of sharia (Islamic law) marks it, in Hirsi Ali's eyes, a radical Islamist state against which moderate Islamic thinkers should rally. But where are the moderates? asks Ali:Where are the Muslim voices raised over the temble injustice of incidents like these? How many Muslims are willing to stand up and say... that this manner of justice is appalling, brutal, and bigoted- and that no matter who said it was the right thing to do, and how long ago it was said, this should no longer be done?6Hirsi Ali is no Boazian or Herskovitzian relativist. She writes, We in the would be wrong. . .to elevate cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life.7 According to her, then, the job of a moderate Islamic thinker is to resist the temptation of cultural relativism, to dare to declare Western democratic law morally superior to Saudi Arabian sharia} Ali closes her opinion piece with an invocation of Tariq Ramadan: I would welcome some guidance from that famous Muslim theologian of moderation, Tariq Ramadan.9 Ironically, both Buruma (who writes Ali off as an extremist because she renounced Islam) and Ali invoke the moderation of Ramadan in the name of bridging the non-violent/radical, Western/non- Western Islamic divide. There is, then, on the part of both Buruma and Ali, an attempt to negotiate diasporic Islam's relationship to the West as both a geographical region and an ideological influence. …

Political intolerance as a clog in the wheel of democratic governance: The way forward

This paper synoptically discusses the concept of political (in)tolerance and its implication on any democratic setting alongside with the concept of governance. Against this background, it argues that most African states took over from centralized and unrepresentative colonial ethnic and religious separatism – tribalism – and become victims to centrifugal aspirations of ambitious politicians speaking in the name of ethnic, religious and regional minorities (Esman, 1997). This monocratic political order (which derives from the Hobbesian notion/conception of the state) not only failed as a system but led to serious in tolerance and in some cases disastrous consequences for the economy and people of Africa (Olowu, 1995). And as a result, enormous amount of money is being spent worldwide on questions of political tolerance. Political intolerance and lack of debate, according to literature, had caused retardation in ideas, innovation, creativity and growth of political consciousness among people due to the fear of misconception of such ideas by their political opponents or fellow comrades. This makes democratic transitions arduous thereby threatening the consolidation of democracy. Political tolerance is not easy to practice. However, its exercise, without jettisoning social justice or the abandonment or weakening of one's conviction will promote a culture of political pluralism. This, without any controversies, will guarantee peace and harmony which is a cornerstone of democratic consolidation. For democratic engine to be well propelled, regardless of any strategy, the best public policy should arise out of citizens’ willingness to imbibe positive values as well as any other attribute and be ready to tolerate the expression of a plurality of political opinions, including those different to their own. This is essential because, instrumental to good democratic governance is human beings with positive values and other dimensions of human performance that enable social, economic and political institutions to function and remain functional, over time (Adjibolosoo, 1995). Key words: Political (in)tolerance, democratic governance, political consciousness, monocratic, democratic engine, positive values, centrifugal aspiration, ethnic and religion separatism, social justice, hobbessian, democratic consolidation.

In Defence of Magisterial Reformation: Martin Bucer’s Writings Against the Spiritualists, 1535

The Protestant Reformation was the largest and most sustained challenge to authority ever experienced within the western Church. It involved a repudiation of existing teachings and forms of worship, along with a rejection, even a demonization, of the clergy and ecclesiastical hierarchy. From the 1520s a number of evangelical Churches developed which were often as hostile to each other as they were to the Catholic Church, and, as a result of polemical public discussions over competing teachings and beliefs, it was no longer clear to many people what constituted the Church or who should exercise authority over religious life. Some were led to question whether there was any need for a Church which imposed dogma and religious discipline on all people within a community or country. It is the discussion on the role and powers of the visible Church which will be examined here, by focusing on the city of Augsburg, but doing so through two significant writings by Martin Bucer, the leading theologian of the Protestant Church in Strasbourg. Recent research has added to our awareness of Bucer’s understanding of the relationship between Church and community, and this contribution will provide insight into how the views of Bucer impacted upon the debate on religious separatism which was taking place in Strasbourg, Augsburg and elsewhere in Germany. They show that even after Bucer had persuaded the government of his own city to expel religious radicals, he continued to believe that support for separatist and spiritualist ideas constituted a substantial challenge to the establishment of disciplined Protestant Churches.

‘Set in the silver sea’: English national identity and European integration

ABSTRACT. Although many short‐term reasons for a specifically English Euro‐scepticism have been proposed, a long‐term perspective is required to provide a fuller and more rounded treatment of this important and topical political issue. It needs to be grasped in terms of cultural, political and religious factors in English history, specifically, the antiquity and political character of a sense of English national identity, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the nature and impact of Protestant covenantalism. Among the factors that have shaped a sense of English national identity are its insular, geopolitical situation, the early development of a centralised English state, and the concomitant growth of a unified English legal system. To the existing sense of national identity under the Tudors was added a strong current of religious separatism, manifested first through Henry VIII's break with Rome and his vindication of monarchical supremacy in a national church, and second through the Puritan return to the idea of election modelled on the Old Testament narrative of the Exodus and Covenant of the Israelites. These currents have lent to the sense of English national identity a strong oppositional character, in contrast to the transterritorialism of Christendom characteristic of the leading Roman Catholic powers. This can be seen both by comparing English with French historical trajectories, and more recently, in terms of the separate, but allied, position of England in relation to European integration.

Paul's Uncommon Declaration in Romans 1:18–32 and Its Problematic Legacy for Pagan and Christian Relations

By the late fourth century, prominent Christian leaders no longer remained content to advocate religious separatism from their polytheistic social environment. Instead they started making more strenuous efforts in law and in the streets to prohibit Greek and other pagan religious practices in the Roman Empire. This change in policy and practice was the outcome of historical factors that need better explanation than that of the unavoidable destiny of Christianity. One important aspect of this change, I argue here, is a problematic innovation in the tradition of Hellenistic Jewish and early Christian polemic against polytheism. The innovation derives from Paul's letter to the Ro-mans and develops through patristic endorsements of Paul's argument. In Rom 1:18–32 Paul fully reworks the Hellenistic Jewish polemical tradition, even though his argument is not yet recognized today as the distinctive proclamation that it is. Nonetheless, the polemic he wages in Rom 1:18–32 is anomalous in the tradition before, during, and for a century after he lived.

Juvenile justice in double jeopardy: the distanced community and vengeful retribution

Contents: R.H. Bremner, Introduction. Fifty Years of Changing Political Winds. For Delinquents - The Tail End of Justice. The Drive for Punishment: Violence Against Youth. Neglected and Abused Children. The Search for Permanence. The Unmarried Mother, Illegitimacy and Adoption. Sex and the Double Standard. The Ups and Downs of Mental Health. Religious Separatism. Racial Discrimination. Postscript for the Future.

The Effects of Religious Separatism on White Protestants in the 1984 Presidential Election

A distinction is made between fundamentalists and evangelicals, based upon attitudes of religious separatism. While the two groups do not differ in terms of partisanship or voting behavior, there appear to exist important differences in the issue attitudes of the two groups. While both groups seem likely to embrace personally conservative positions on the moral issues, the data analyzed here suggest that fundamentalists are significantly more likely to translate personal values into demands for the legal enforcement of these values. However, the results of this study suggest the possibility that evangelicals were somewhat more likely than fundamentalists to use moral or social issues as criteria for presidential vote choice in 1984.

"The Fork in the Road: Religious Separatism vs African Nationalism in the Cape Colony, 1890-1910"

"The Fork in the Road: Religious Separatism vs African Nationalism in the Cape Colony, 1890-1910"

African Nationalism and Religious Independency in Cape Colony

In two recent issues of this journal Wallace G. Mills has discussed the religious component in early African nationalism in South Africa. In his first article he claimed that 'the roots of African political and nationalist movements in the twentieth century can be found in the revivalism which emerged in I866' in Cape Colony. In the second he asserts the the 'difficult decades' between 189o and I9IO 'saw the emergence of ...religious separatism and African nationalism', but that they were in no way linked; the contention that religious separatism was 'a precursor of and contributor to African nationalism... is, as far as South Africa is concerned, quite erroneous.' 1 In making this latter assertion, Mills believed himself to be challenging the view that religious separatism was 'the first manifestation of secondary resistance at the Cape.' For this view he cites a seminar paper I wrote in 1969 in which, wrongly according to Mills, I looked to religious independency for some of the roots of twentieth century African nationalism in South Africa. 2 Aware, however, that most separatist churches have in the twentieth century adopted an apolitical or anti-political stance, I spoke of religious separatism developing 'into a rival channel for black aspirations in the twentieth century' and pointed out that most Christians who occupied positions of leadership

African Economic Experiments in Colonial Natal 1845-1880

Recent investigations of African economic life in the nineteenth-century Cape Colony have opened the way for the destruction of much conventional wisdom concerning the course of South African development.1 The emerging story of the rise and fall of black peasant communities challenges the deeply entrenched belief that Africans were hide-bound traditionalists slow to adapt to a dynamic settler economy which they neither liked nor understood--that they were late starters in a race they were bound to lose. This challenge can be strengthened by a review of African economic initiatives in the early decades of the Natal Colony.2 By the time of the Zulu War, African Christian communities had not only established a flourishing peasant economy but had also embarked upon entrepreneurial capitalist ventures on a significant scale. Their story suggests that the well-known curbs placed by white legislators upon African economic activity after the Zulu War were not so much designed to safeguard whites against potential black competition but aimed rather to undo progress which had already been made.3 Moreover, it is at least arguable that the rise of political activism and religious separatism at the end of the nineteenth century owed more to the loss of valued economic opportunities than to a newly-awakened desire to compete on equal terms in the dominant society. Christian missions in Natal provided a favorable setting for African economic experiments. Well-financed operations by nine different missionary societies made Natal one of the most heavily evangelised territories in the world.4 Because Congregational, Methodist, and Anglican missionaries had easy access to influential officials in the early years of the colony, missions benefitted greatly from the land arrangements made by the locations commissigns of the eighteen forties and by Sir George Grey's scheme of Mission Reserves. In addition, Lutheran, Methodist, and Anglican missions purchased extensive farms when land was cheap which served the needs of their converts adequately until about the time of the Zulu War.6 From these bases where the small black Christian population (between eight and ten thousand by 1880) enjoyed a privileged status, missionaries moved immediately to effect an economic revolution. The clothing which missionaries recommended for the sake of modesty was for many of their converts an introduction to a new system of production and exchange. Whether the convert earned his new clothes by wage labor or fabricated them with European looms and needles, he was entering into new kinds of economic relationships. The upright which rose on all mission stations embodied materials and demanded the use of tools unknown in the pre-colonial period. Indeed, on the assumption that the builders of such houses had become importers of dutiable goods, African Christians won exemption from Natal's hut tax.7 Missionaries knew what they were doing when they sought to accelerate the transition to a capitalist economy. Very much under the influence of T. F. Buxton and David Livingstone, missionaries of all denominations agreed that Civilisation and Christianisation would reinforce each other.8 By 1861, a pioneer American missionary could cite facts to support his theory:

The Fork in the Road: Religious Separatism versus African Nationalism in the Cape Colony, 1890-1910

The Fork in the Road: Religious Separatism versus African Nationalism in the Cape Colony, 1890-1910

Rejoinder [The Fork in the Road: Religious Separatism Versus African Nationalism in the Cape Colony, 1890-1910

Rejoinder [The Fork in the Road: Religious Separatism Versus African Nationalism in the Cape Colony, 1890-1910

The Idaho Anti-Mormon Test Oath, 1884-1892

HOSTILITY AGAINST THE MORMONS in Idaho was so intense that in 1884 the legislature directed a test act against the offending Saints. No member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints thereafter could vote, hold office, or serve on a jury. Almost a fouth of the territory's population was afflicted. Issues of denial of civil liberties through the enforcement of this test oath were argued in the United States Congress and before the United States Supreme Court in 189o, but without reversal of Idaho's proscriptive oath. Not until 1892, with settlement of the polygamy controversy and withdrawal of the Mormon church from politics, did the Idaho legislature relent and rescind the oath. For some years Mormons had constituted an important minority in Idaho. A Utah boundary survey, approved February 15, 1872, transferred a number of substantial Mormon settlements to Idaho jurisdiction. Thereafter, the largest Mormon population outside Utah was in southern Idaho. An organized anti-Mormon movement, matching one which had just commenced in Utah, stirred southeastern Idaho shortly after the boundary survey. Its inception can be traced in part to attempts to halt Mormon expansion northward from Utah; to distrust engendered by Mormon social and religious separatism; to reaction against economic codperatives, which the Mormons introduced in 1868 and adopted widely in 1874; and to objection to the Mormon custom of unanimous, cooperative voting for Democratic political candidates. The Independent Anti-Mormon party of Oneida County captured southeastern Idaho in 1874 and remained in office for almost a decade. Shifting patterns of settlement, however, led to disorganization and to local collapse of the anti-Mormon movement in the elections of 188o and 1882.

Religious Enthusiasm and Separatism in Colonial New England

Thomas Underhill, a citizen of London during the Commonwealth, described that period of English history as “Hell Broke Loose.” Partly as a result of Anabaptist influence, and partly as a continuation of the indigenous Lollard movement, large numbers of persons in every part of England separated themselves from the Established Church and formed themselves into independent religious societies. Some of these groups were very eccentric in their beliefs and practices. Thomas Edwards, their bitter opponent, made a Catalogue of “the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies and Pernicious Practices … vented and acted in England” between the years 1642 and 1646, which he called, Gangraena. In it he distinguishes no less than two hundred and ten errors which were held by one or other of the sixteen groups into which he divides the sectaries. The sixteen were, “Independents, Brownists, Chiliasts or Millenaries, Antinomians, Anabaptists, Manifestarians or Arminians, Libertines, Familists, Enthusiasts, Seekers and Waiters, Perfectists, Socinians, Arians, Anti-Trinitarians, Anti-Scripturalists, Sceptics and Quietists.” The Parliamentary army especially abounded with men whose “great religion” was “liberty of conscience and liberty of preaching.” G. P. Gooch and others have shown how deeply the roots of modern democracy are embedded in the religious struggles of these seventeenth century sects. Most of them disappeared with the Commonwealth, or were absorbed in the rising Quaker movement, but certain fundamental principles for which they stood continued to exist and to mold public opinion.