Sacred Traditions Research Articles

The Quest for the Historical Muhammad

Over one hundred years ago Western scholars began to investigate the origins of Islam, using the highest standards of objective historical scholarship of the time. Their aim was to determine what could be known about Muhammad and the rise of early Islam quite apart from the pious and totally unobjective traditions preserved by the Muslim religious community. In some ways this research was inspired by a similar investigation of Christianity made famous by Albert Schweitzer's Quest of the Historical Jesus. Today although much has been learned about early Christianity, little comparable progress has been made in the field of Islamic Studies. Here objective historical research has long been severely handicapped both by the resistance of Muslim societies to Western analysis of their sacred traditions and by the apologetic approaches of many Western scholars, who have compromised their investigations for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities. It is in this context that Ibn Warraq presents this important anthology of the best studies of Muhammad and early Islam ranging from the very beginnings of Islamic Studies in the nineteenth century to contemporary research. In his selection and in an introductory essay, Warraq makes it clear that some very serious scholarly controversies lie at the heart of Islam. First, the Koran itself, the Muslim sacred scripture and the foundation of Islamic culture, is called into question as the basis for objective historical knowledge of Muhammad. Some scholars have also questioned the reliability of most of the other early Arabic documents that supposedly attest to events in the life of Muhammad and his followers. Was the Koran dictated by Muhammad at all? Was it actually compiled any earlier than a hundred years after the Prophet's death? How much of Muslim sacred tradition, in the light of objective historical analysis, must be dismissed as unreliable hearsay? Were the motives of the first Muslim conquerors during the Jihad truly religious in nature or largely mercenary? These disturbing questions, long suppressed throughout the history of Islamic scholarship, are here raised again in these erudite and thoroughly researched essays by noted scholars.

L’historiographie de saint Dominique en pays toulousain, de Rechac à Touron (1640-1740)

Historiography of St Dominic in the Region of Toulouse, from Rechac to Touron (1640-1740). Cambefort and Rechac, who were largely dependent upon each other, belonged to a generation which accepted tradition as a whole. The following generation, embodied by Souèges and Percin, distanced itself from it. Baillet and Echard were more critical towards tradition, as especially Cuypers, a Bollandist, and Antoine Touron. The analysis of the works of those historians allows to grasp the development of the legend around St Dominic, which owes a great deal to Alain de la Roche. In the region, the second half of the 17th century marks a climax with the building of several memorials in Fanjeaux and its surroundings. Inspired by fervour, the most cutting authors do not question the most sacred traditions that were the miracle of the fire, the preaching of the rosary to the inhabitants of Toulouse or the presence of the founder of their Order at the Battle of Muret.

Indigenous religions: a companion

Part 1 People: the cosmos as intersubjective - Native American other-than-human persons, Kenneth M. Morrison native womanism -exemplars of indigenism in sacred traditions of kinship, M.A. Jaimes Guerrero shamans, Piers Vitebsicy witchcraft and healing among the Bangwa of Cameroon, Fiona Bowie Rattray's request -spirit possession among the Bono of West Africa, Jan G. Platvoet. Part 2 Powers: Mana and Tapu - sacred knowledge, sacred boundaries, Pater I. Mataira magic, religion and secularity among the Azande and Nuer, Berel Dov Lerner the dreaming in contemporary Aboriginal Australia, Lynne Hume ecology and religion in Karuk orientations toward the land, Sean M. Connors. Part 3 Gift: art works in Aotearoa, Graham Harvey music, art and movement among the Yoruba, Olu Taiwo the unwieldy promise of ceremonies - the case of the Jakalteko May's dance of the conquest, Charles D. Thompson rites of passage among the Lohorung Rai and East Nepal, Charlotte E. Hardman gifts for the Sky Peole - animal sacrifice, head hunting and power among the Naga of Burma and Assam, Mark R. Woodward characteristics of African indigenous religions in contemporary Zimbabwe, James L. Cox spirituality, values and boundaries in the revitalization of a Mi'kmaq community, Raoul R. Andersen et al touching the past, teaching ways forward - the American Indian powwow, Ten Brewer.

Rituals of Fertility and the Sacrifice of Desire: Nazarite Women's Performance in South Africa

With close to one million members, the Church of the Nazarites (ibandla lamaNazaretha) is one of the most popular indigenous religious communities in South Africa. Founded in 1910 by Isaiah Shembe, it offers South Africans - particularly disadvantaged black women and girls - a way to remake and reconnect to ancient sacred traditions disrupted by colonialism and apartheid. Ethnomusicologist Carol Muller explores the everyday lives of Nazarite women through their religious songs and dances, dream narratives and fertility rituals, which come to life both musically and visually on CD-ROM. Against the backdrop of South Africa's turbulent history, Muller shows how Shembe's ideas of female ritual purity developed as a response to a regime and culture that pushed all things associated with women, cultural expression and Africanness to the margins. Carol Muller also includes details of her own journey, as a young, white South African woman, to the other side of a divided society.

Mircea Eliade and the Sacred Tradition (A Personal Account)

Research Article| October 01 1999 Mircea Eliade and the Sacred Tradition (A Personal Account) William W. Quinn, Jr. William W. Quinn, Jr. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nova Religio (1999) 3 (1): 147–153. https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.1999.3.1.147 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation William W. Quinn; Mircea Eliade and the Sacred Tradition (A Personal Account). Nova Religio 1 October 1999; 3 (1): 147–153. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/nr.1999.3.1.147 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentNova Religio Search This content is only available via PDF. © 1999 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.1999 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Cultural Heritage of American Food Habits and Implications for the Hospitality Industry

SUMMARY This study has profiled the cultural heritage of American food habits. American food habits remained predominantly European until the middle of the 20th century, and became distinctly American by late 20th century. This study indicates that the relationship between the culture and the food habits is bi-directional. Analysis of changes in the family structure, and their impact on food habits in the Western civilization from the period of the Roman and Greek empires through the 20th century are included. Contrary to the earlier beliefs, food habits of individuals were found to be more permanent and stable than their socioeconomic, cultural, religious, educational, and ethnic preferences. American food habits of the 20th century are influenced by its cultural sub-groups. Food habits include not only food consumption habits but also the food procurement, production, preparation, and preservation practices. The food habits are often passed on from one generation to another like sacred texts and family traditions. Changing food habits and their impact on the hospitality industry are discussed.

The Word in the Christian Religious Tradition

The problem of the Word in Christianity is one of the key, affecting the core of the dogma and pervading its practice. Theological thought gave answers, different from secular science, to questions about the functions of the word in God-knowledge and its role in the religious life of the individual and the Church. Any study of the language of religion can not ignore this experience. Our goal is not to assess the truth of the theological understanding of the relationship between human language and Divine reality, but to trace the specificity of the Christian use of language as a means of religious cognition and the way of expressing the religious consciousness of believers, to analyze the Christian theological concept of the Word, the role of the word in Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition, and the truth of religious texts, the role and meaning of the word in the Christian religious tradition.

Secular Idolatry and Sacred Traditions: A Critique of the Supreme Court's Secularization Analysis

The Supreme Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence has generated great controversy and received virulent criticism from people on both sides of the constitutional debate. The Court's analysis attempts to delineate the boundaries between and secular society, raising fundamental questions about the role of in the lives of individuals and in the public sphere. Such constitutional determinations strike at the very core of the American identity, potentiallyjeopardizing long-held traditions. Furthermore, these issues beg metaphysical questions about the definition of religion and the role of both and history in the evaluation of potentially unconstitutional practices. As part of this legal challenge, the Supreme Court has engaged in the controversial task of ascertaining whether seemingly religious practices and symbols are in fact religious, or whether history and collective experience purged them of their religious significance. By distinguishing practices that are religious from those that have lost any true religious significance,' the Court has engaged in a secularization of religious practices and symbols. Examples include

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Conquest and Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico by Andrew L. Knaut

286 BOOK REVIEWS The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Conquest and Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico. ByAndrew L. Knaut. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. 1995. Pp. xx, 248. $29.95 clothbound.) Concise, lively, and well-crafted, this retelling has much more to say about development of the seventeenth-century Spanish colony than about its stunning climax of 1680. But by what other title would the book grab greater attention? Knaut aspires to reinterpret. Skillfully utilizing available printed primary and most standard secondary sources, he attempts "to glean the Pueblo role in shaping the history of seventeenth-century New Mexico and in carrying out successfully the revolt of 1680" (pp. xiv-xv). The Pueblo Indians were not, he reassures us, passive pawns manipulated for three generations by culturally superior Europeans until, abused beyond endurance, they exploded in 1680. Instead , in diverse ways, they resisted colonization from the beginning, adeptly exploiting dissension within the Hispanic community and subtly influencing its culturally isolated members. These are valid points, but I think Knaut goes too far. The author cannot imagine Pueblo Indians accepting "the bitter pill of conversion " (p. 77) or "the Spanish and Franciscan yoke" (p. 86) for any but practical reasons of food supply or military protection. He approves the natives' defense and continued clandestine practice of their own rich sacred tradition, yet fails to consider where it came from.Who were the kachinas? Earlier, Pueblo peoples had accepted spiritual concepts that worked their way up from Mesoamerica. To exalt their descendants' resistance to Spanish imposition of a further wave of religious ideas denies the Pueblos credit for accepting anything on spiritual grounds. Although their population declined by at least fifty percent during the period 1598 to 1680, the Pueblo Indians still vastly outnumbered the multi-racial Hispanic community. Knaut rightly suggests that the Indian majority had significant influence on the European minority, but he exaggerates the latter's cultural isolation and economic stagnation. Sworn declarations before the Inquisition do offer fascinating evidence of Hispanic recourse to native cures, curses, and customs, but they are neither "countless" (p. 150) nor necessarily normative. Hispanic-Pueblo miscegenation certainly took place, but to what degree? Knaut's claim of its "widespread incidence ... in the colony throughout the seventeenth century" (p. 134) has not been substantiated. Many of the oftmaligned mestizos, linked by detractors in the same breath with mulattoes, came from other parts of New Spain. "As a mestizo," Knaut writes,"Aguilar represented what had become, by the time of his birth in the third decade of the seventeenth century, a large portion of the Hispanic population in the province. Isolated among an overwhelming native population, Hispanics in New Mexico inevitably intermixed with Pueblo Indians" (p. 139). Born in Michoac án, Nicolás de Aguilar had emigrated via Parral to New Mexico where he married a Spanish woman, not a Pueblo. BOOK REVIEWS 287 After Spanish recolonization in the l690's, Knaut concludes,"miscegenation continued to erase the genetic lines separating the land's native inhabitants from the newest set of colonists" (p. 186). What seems more remarkable to me is how the Pueblos, including mixed-blood babies raised by them, and Híspanles kept and still keep their reassuringly separate cultural identities. Having raised these important questions, I hope Andrew Knaut will return to consider them further with the same verve he has demonstrated in this spirited first book. John L. Kessell University ofNew Mexico Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization: The Impact of the Mission System on California Indians. By Robert H.Jackson and Edward Castillo. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1995. Pp. vii, 213. $32.50.) The impact of the Franciscan missions on the Indians of California long has been a subject of intense debate. Even during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the missions were in their ascendancy, visitors expressed widely different views. The debate continues today as the founder of the California missions, Father Junípero Serra, O.F.M., moves toward canonization as the first saint of the Golden State. Indians, Franciscans, and Spanish Colonization is a major contribution to this ongoing controversy. Historian Robert H. Jackson and anthropologist Edward Castillo (Cahuilla/Luiseño) summarize and advance...

Essay Review: A Tribute to Philip Sherrard (1922-1995)

Reviewed by: A Tribute to Philip Sherrard (1922–1995) John Chryssavgis General biography and bibliography Philip Sherrard—poet, translator, literary scholar, theologian, and interpreter of the Orthodox tradition—died in London on 30 May 1995, aged 72. A pioneer of Modern Greek studies in England, Sherrard was highly influential in making major Greek poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries known in the English-speaking world. A profound thinker and prolific writer, Sherrard was captivated by a lifelong mission to reinstate a sense of poetry in the aridity of life, and to restore a sense of sacred cosmology to the world. His own selected poems recently appeared in a volume entitled In the Sign of the Rainbow (1994). Shortly before Easter 1995, he had completed a new book that he entitled Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition and that contained an intuitive, almost predictive chapter on “Death and Dying.” This book is currently under consideration for publication by Holy Cross Press, Brookline. Born in Oxford and educated there as well as in Cambridge, Sherrard served as Assistant Director of the British School at Athens and lectured on the history of the Orthodox Church at the University of London. He spent most of his life as a writer and translator, bringing to both pursuits a breadth of literary and theological knowledge. Inspired by the values of modern Greece, Sherrard wrote on and translated (with Edmund Keeley) Cavafy, Sikelianos, Seferis, and Elytis, among others. See, for example, Six Poets of Modern Greece (1960). Yet he was also profoundly imbued with the prayer and silence of Orthodox Christianity, interpreting the cultural background of Greek poetry and life through the spiritual wealth of the Orthodox tradition, as in his early book The Marble Threshing Floor (1956). His love for Greece is well attested in his brief yet masterly introduction to the anthology The Pursuit of Greece (1964). In 1977 Greece became his adopted permanent place of residence, but Orthodoxy had been his “home” since the early [End Page 345] 1950s, when he became acquainted with the Orthodox Church, into which he was formally received in 1956. I met him only once, on the Holy Mountain, but understood through our correspondence what Greece meant for him, why the Holy Mountain was revered by him, and how the entire world was seen by him as a burning bush of divine energy. “Every Thing that Lives Is Holy” was the title of the last lecture he delivered in London (1994); he spoke then of the beauty “in every natural form of life and being,” the beauty that “is itself the overture to paradise.” This lecture was given at the Temenos Academy, in the very room in which Darwin first expounded his theory of evolution. This must have amused Sherrard. Everything that Sherrard did was undertaken with passion. He wrote fervently about the sacred power of sexual love in Christianity and Eros (1976); he endeavored fearlessly to discern the philosophical, political, and social reasons for the division between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy in The Greek East and the Latin West (1959), and also in Church, Papacy, and Schism (1978); in an effort to address the ecological crisis, he forcefully castigated our exploitation of natural resources in The Rape of Man and Nature (1987), The Sacred in Life and Art (1990), and Human Image, World Image (1992). He condemned any attitude that detracts from or blurs the sacramental dimension of the world. The conviction displayed in his writings and even their occasionally categorical tone were supported by the consistency of his own committed life. His compassion, gentleness, generosity, humor, and humility were firmly rooted in the spiritual tradition of silence and prayer that he so loved and to which he devoted the greater part of his life. He wrote about Athos: The Mountain of Silence (1960), and from the mid-1970s until the very end of his life was the translator (in collaboration with, among others, Bishop Kallistos Ware) of the four volumes of the Philokalia, the anthology of Greek Patristic writings between the fourth and fifteenth centuries on prayer and the spiritual life. While Sherrard has been criticized—misunderstood for his seemingly negative attitude toward the West, for...

Heterographies: Postmodernism and the Crisis of the Sacred in Maghreb Literature

HETEROGRAPHIES : POSTMODERNISM AND THE CRISIS OF THE SACRED IN MAGHREB LITERATURE Lucv Stone McNeece The Maghreb is but one of several regions of the developing world struggUng to chart an itinerary between tradition and modernity. Yetin this area the issues ofconflict are particularly inflammatory because the crisisinvolvesradicaUycontradictorywaysofUfe competingforhegemony: anincreasinglyindustriaUzed, technocratic, postmodernculture imported from Europe, an arrogant andcorrupt nationaUsm, and a fundamentaUst theocracy propelled by Arab imperialism. Behind the alarm caused by recent highjackings and the kiUing of inteUectuals and foreigners in Algeria and Egypt, the specter ofIslam revives dark atavistic fantasies, reminding Europe and the West of the limits ofits global policies: Iran, Libya, Lebanon, and Iraq still haunt the coUective imagination. In the increasingly precarious and polarized atmosphere of North Africa, the countries of Morocco and Tunisia are considered oases in a barren land; formerly French protectorates rather than settlement colonies like Algeria, they seem to have been spared the bloody legacy of decolonization and to have negotiated successful poUtical and economic relations with France and Europe. Moroccan and Tunisian writers are widely pubUshed and acclaimed abroad. Many of these writers divide their time between the Maghreb and universities in France, Canada or the United States—so much so that they are frequently accused ofhaving abandoned political realities at home. In addition, the writing of the generation that came ofage in the 1960s, some ofwhose writers wrote for the Moroccan review, Souffles, is considered difficult to read, provoking such epithets as "neo-baroque" and "hermetic." The works of writers such as Abdelkebir Khatibi of Morocco and Abdelwahab Meddeb ofTunisia are examples of a "new" type ofwriting emanating from the Maghreb that has brought about both criticism and acclaim, and which raises difficult questions about the role of the postcolonial writer. Unlike writers of the preceding generations who celebrated their traditions or openly miUtated for independence, writers like Khatibi and Meddeb seem to be involved in a wholly different enterprise that bears Uttle relation to urgent poUtical reaUties. ParadoxicaUy, their writing has been caUed "postmodern" and "avant-garde" because it shares such features as intertextuaUty, metafiction, collage, polyvalence, and self-conscious linguistic play with other contemporary Uteratures of Europe and the Americas. Whatis the relationofthese travelUngfrancophone Maghreb writers to their history and cultures of origin? From where do they speak? For whom do theywrite? Whatdo they write about, and why? In the following pages, I hope toshowthatmanyofthe so-caUed"Western" characteristics ofthese writers' work are distinctive features that connect them to their own popular and sacred traditions. Ifthese effects are recontextuaUzed, theywill appear as symptoms ofa different notionofUterature (a different conception of the sign and of representation)—in turn grounded in a differentepistemology—than thatwhich has often prevailed in the West. Vol. 19 (1995): 60 THE COMPAKATIST Their apparent "betrayal" may be seen then as an attemptto reintegrate their fragmented cultural Imaginary and to dismantle the Manichean rhetoricofvictimizationandvengeance in order to resituate the Maghreb subject as an agentin the necessary process ofmodernization. The question ofpoUtical relevance is frequently raised with respect to postcolonial Uterature, but the diversity ofinterpretation requires that we reexamine what is meant by the term "poUtical." In contrast to the apparent separation ofUterature from poUtics that characterized European High Modernist culture, Uterary and aesthetic movements of the postcolonial period have been more expUcitly associated with poUtical agendas. While it is perhaps simpler to define the term "poUtical" in its narrow, or most obvious, sense, the notion of"poUtical" referring to direct poUtical action in animmediate context is only one manifestation ofa far more extensive realm. Itis now generaUy agreed that there is a "poUtical" dimensionto culturalproductions that may be less expUcit, though no less radical or far-reachingthan direct poUticalintervention. This dimension includes the variety ofemotional investments and interests, originating in areas outside ofpoUtical action, which nonetheless motivate poUtical behavior and events. The term "poUtical" can reasonably be appUed to aU activity that takes into account the organization and functioning ofpower structures. Despite its status as "fiction," Uterature, like other forms of representation, is among the primary vehicles for the transmission of values andideology in any culture.5 The question, perhaps, oughtnotto be whether or not a Uterary work is in some important sense "poUtical," but rather...

Civil Sin: Evil and Purgation in the Media

“Today, we can say unequivocally that there are two major types of theology: (1) academic theology, which concerns itself with critically relating the meanings of sacred texts and traditions to a religious community, and (2) popular theology, which uncritically establishes, maintains, and changes the mythological assumptions of a people, especially through the mass media. Both theologies have cosmological implications and are shaped by anthropological assumptions. … It is increasingly clear in the modem world that popular theology has far more direct and immediate influence than academic theology on culture and society.”

On Isaiah’s Use of Israel’s Sacred Tradition

Apres avoir rappele que vrais et faux prophetes se distinguent par l'interpretation qu'ils donnent, a la lumiere de leur temps, de la tradition, la Tora, l'A. signale la singularite d'Isaie. Contrairement aux autres prophetes canoniques, Isaie se refere fort peu aux traditions mosaiques. En revanche, il accorde une place importante aux traditions qui ont trait a David et a la royaute. L'usage qu'il fait de ces traditions releve de la meme hermeneutique que celle appliquee a la Tora par les autres prophetes.

Can Christian Faith Survive Auschwitz?

AbstractThis paper argues that, for both Jews and Christians, the Holocaust represents a hermeneutic rupture. After Auschwitz, Jews find their belief in the God of history called into question. And Christians find their past interpretations of the Gospel as good news called into question, when forced by the Holocaust to see that it has been used to justify 2000 years of persecution, expulsion, and pogrom against the Jewish people. For Christians to acknowledge the Holocaust as hermeneutic rupture is to give it the authority of a new hermeneutic criterion for interpreting the Gospel, in which nothing is the word of God which denies the covenantal integrity of the Jewish People. The Holocaust forces a redefinition of the “canon within the canon” in which Paul's letter to the Romans and the Book of Job become central texts. Romans becomes the cornerstone of post-Holocaust theology because it predates the fall of the temple and the emergence of the anti-Judaic myth of Christian supercession and affirms the ongoing election of the Jewish people. And after the Holocaust, the Book of Job takes on new meaning as an allegory, only a desacralized Christianity which demythologizes some of its most sacred traditions in order to affirm human dignity and Jewish integrity can survive Auschwitz with any authenticity.

Native Mesoamerican Spirituality: Ancient Myths, Discourses, Stories, Doctrines, Hymns, Poems from the Aztec, Yucatec, Quiché-Maya and other Sacred Traditions. Edited with a foreword, introduction and notes by Miguel León-Portilla. Translations by Miguel León-Portilla, Arthur J. O. Anderson, Charles E. Dibble, and Munro S. Edmonson. Preface by Fernando Horcasitas. (New York: Paulist Press, 1980. Pp. xx, 300. Bibliography. Index. No price.)

Native Mesoamerican Spirituality: Ancient Myths, Discourses, Stories, Doctrines, Hymns, Poems from the Aztec, Yucatec, Quiché-Maya and other Sacred Traditions. Edited with a foreword, introduction and notes by Miguel León-Portilla. Translations by Miguel León-Portilla, Arthur J. O. Anderson, Charles E. Dibble, and Munro S. Edmonson. Preface by Fernando Horcasitas. (New York: Paulist Press, 1980. Pp. xx, 300. Bibliography. Index. No price.)

Soul: A Historical Reconstruction of Continuity and Change in Black Popular Music

rT r aHE SOUL TRADITION is prime cultural force in American popular music; of that, there can be little doubt, although this musical phenomenon is sometimes vaguely defined. Born of Civil Rights and Black Power movements of 1960s, soul has provided musical and cultural foundation for virtually every facet of contemporary popular music. More important than its commercial successes, however, are messages and philosophies it has communicated and musical influences which underlie its development. In broad sense, philosophies and concepts of soul reflect collective sensibilities of black community. Civil Rights and Black Power exponents addressed same concern: their unwillingness to endure adverse social, political, and economic conditions. Performers, musicians, and composers took up these topical problems in their music; they also offered solutions for improvement and change. Thus, through soul, black performers presented qualities of revitalized black consciousness, reaffirming destiny, and a sense of unity and power. An active ideology, in short, soul speaks to black aesthetic. The soul concept is not new to American blacks of diaspora, nor has scholarly research failed to document this fact.1 Research has consistently reported similar, if not same, findings: concept is an integral part of much larger infrastructure, which is grounded in complex African roots and disseminated through spiritual consciousness of its practitioners.2 This consciousness sustained its people through cruel and inhuman conditions of the middle passage, of slavery, and of present times. The present essay examines evolution and essence of this important tradition. More directly, it considers musical phenomenon from three perspectives: (1) its evolution from secular and sacred traditions rooted in an African past; (2) relationship of its cultural context to historical and socio-political events; and (3) its musical character and dissemination through emergent contemporary styles. Generically, term soul denotes musical style derived from blues-based dance music and black gospel tradition. Though

The Negro in the Political Life of the United States

American political philosophy and institutions are rooted in the fertile soil of eighteenth century liberalism. The dominant influence in American thinking at the time of the Revolution was civil libertarianism. This promised much for the status of the individual in the society. The American Revolution, admittedly bourgeois in character, and more a secession than a revolution, revealed a high regard for the rights of property as well as for the rights of the individual. Of greatest significance to the Negro, however, is the fact that this revolt handed down to the American society a constitutional framework that has become a sacred tradition, which embraces fundamental concepts of human equality and human rights. It is within this conceptual milieu, inherited from the American Revolution, that the Negro has carried on his struggles for social, political and economic emancipation. These concepts have given a measure of realism to the Negro's persistent assumption that he is entitled to equal status in the society, that he too has rights that he must fight for, that an individual black citizen is due as full a measure of human dignity as a white one. The Constitution itself, of course, represents a compromise solution between those conflicting groups in the Convention which actually feared democracy as a hydra-headed monster, on the one hand, and those which sincerely subscribed to the principles of fundamental equalitarianism, on the other. The entire constitutional history of the nation has reflected this compromise in the quixotic tendency to sanctify its democratic creeds while stubbornly retaining its racial bigotries. Paradoxical as it may seem in the light of the historical record, however, the fact remains that the Constitution did lay the basis for the most broad ideological pattern of individual human equality, human liberty and human rights that the modern world has known. The goal set for this nation by the Founding Fathers is the attainment of political democracy. It is the people who are to count in this society. Government is to be theirs-of, by and for them-all of them. Perhaps the most serious obstacle to the realization of this ideal goal has been the frailty of those who make up the society: the apathy, prejudices, intolerance, greed, and ignorance of the citizenry. Yet, it is, in a sense, of the essence of democracy that this should be so. This is at once the promise and the hazard of the democratic way. As one author aptly puts it: