Secular Academy Research Articles

Analytic theology and the academic study of religion: an overview

Abstract Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion aims to explain analytic theology to other theologians, and to scholars of religion, and to explain those other fields to analytic theologians. The book defends analytic theology from some common criticisms, but also argues that analytic theologians have much to learn from other forms of inquiry. Analytic theology is a legitimate form of theology, and a legitimate form of academic inquiry, and it can be a valuable conversation partner within the wider religious studies academy. I aim to articulate an attractive vision of analytic theology, foster a more fruitful inter-disciplinary conversation, and enable scholars across the religious studies academy to understand one another better. Analytic theology can flourish in the secular academy, and flourish as authentically Christian theology.

Why the Secular Academy Needs Cross-Cultural Religious Literacy

I make the empirical argument that most of humankind and much of the academy practices one form of religion and/or spiritual practice. And yet, in public life, secularity is assumed and regularized as rational and life giving. Recent science shows the power of spirituality and religion for human flourishing. And yet, many secularists diminish religion and assume the worst about it without evidence. I argue that cross-cultural religious literacy (CCRL) is and can be an essential tool toward greater public understanding and a more productive dialogue between religionists and secularists in the academy and beyond.

Scholarly Values, Methods, and Evidence in the Academic Study of Religion

Abstract The Values in Scholarship on Religion (VISOR) project collected data on the preferred methods and values of scholars in the academic study of religion. This dataset supports comparisons between members of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and partner organizations, such as the North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR), as well as members of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR). The AAR-partner sample differs from the SSSR sample in consistently preferring humanities over empirical approaches. Both samples were modestly aligned with the secular academy in rejecting theological claims as evidence. The subgroups within the AAR-partner sample that were affiliated with the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) were the most firmly committed to secular approaches and evidence. These findings indicate the range of perspectives currently present in the big-tent AAR, which deliberately embraces theological scholarship as well as secular religious studies research.

Philosophy and theology

The contributions of “the turn to religion” in continental philosophy have begun to find their place in South African theological and philosophical circles. This article asks: how are we to position this phenomenon in the South African context and what implications it might have for the future of systematic theology? After situating the “turn to religion” in general, the article traces the historical development of philosophy’s creative relationship to theology by focusing on three representatives from the Stellenbosch tradition: the theologian Johannes du Plessis, the philosopher J.F. Kirsten, as well as the philosopher, Johann Degenaar. It argues that the relationship between philosophy and theology cultivated in these figures is characterized by what can be called the “propaedeutic” model, whereby theology is subjected to a “preparation” by philosophy. This model raises questions about the “use” of philosophy in contemporary systematic theology within the context of the secular academy and an ever-pluralizing world. The article suggests that recent debates in the continental “turn” are uniquely positioned to help reflect on such questions of methodology, and to this end makes a tentative proposal drawing on the philosophical-theological approach developed by the French thinker, Emmanuel Falque.

Introduction: anthropology within and without the secular condition

ABSTRACT This introductory essay explores the secular constitution of the discipline of anthropology. Anthropology has reflexively interrogated the influence of the colonial, post-colonial, and rhetorical conditions that have shaped its development; however, its growth within the decidedly secular academy has been largely ignored. This inattention has persisted in recent decades even as anthropologists have begun investigating the place of secularism in the lives of those it studies. In advocating that we inquire into the secular making of anthropology itself, we argue that this task not only requires exploring how anthropologists represent others, and how they relate to scholarship produced in related fields such as theology, religious studies, and philosophy, but also demands attention to the ways the secular world bounds the life of anthropological reason.

SCT: Theology today in Quebec: A time of transition

In 2015, three Quebec theological institutions undertook an institutional transformational process to address a long-term decline. The profile of Quebec theology was thus reassessed, both institutionally and in its understanding of its status, plan and future. This is true not only for the three institutions involved, but also for the entire community of university-level theologians and institutions. In this article, I will begin by connecting these transformations to the founding period of Quebec theology. I will then describe the restructuring that took place from 2015 to 2017 and explain its immediate impact. Comparing Quebec these institutional shifts to a debate about the situation theologians’ liberty with respect to Church magisterium in Austria (2011), I will emphasize the end of a fundamental tension between theologians and Church leadership in Quebec’s context, and the new problem that has replaced it in the context of the secular Academy. I will conclude by presenting some outcomes of the new configuration in three Quebec universities.

The “social soldier” and the mission to “retrieve the lost honor”: An ideal image of the desired graduate of an Israeli general pre-military academy

This article examines the desired image of the graduate of one secular Israeli pre-military academy. Drawing on a qualitative case study based on in-depth interviews with staff, students, and graduates, it outlines the academy’s vision of the desired graduate, its internal educational processes and situates the academy’s educational discourse in the context of the civic-military relations in Israel. The major findings show how the secular academy under study creates a new ideal of a social soldier in opposition to the ideal of the religious soldier, promoted by the religious-Zionist academies which are the secular academies’ ideological and political rival. The data further describe how the academy seeks to contribute to the army’s community life and values as well as in Israeli society, by creating special tracks in the army, wherein groups of graduates can continue their military service together. A central finding is the redefinition of Jewish identity as secular, cultural and national as opposed to religious Judaism that is promoted by the religious Zionist academies. The article concludes that these findings reflect broader hegemonic transformations in Israel such as the increasing dominance of the religious right, which the secular elites seek to counter and by reclaiming their former influence.

American Priest: The Ambitious Life and Conflicted Legacy of Notre Dame’s Father Ted Hesburgh by Wilson D. Miscamble

Reviewed by: American Priest: The Ambitious Life and Conflicted Legacy of Notre Dame’s Father Ted Hesburgh by Wilson D. Miscamble James L. Heft SM American Priest: The Ambitious Life and Conflicted Legacy of Notre Dame’s Father Ted Hesburgh. By Wilson D. Miscamble, CSC. New York: Image Books, 2019. 464 pp. $28.00. The dramatic changes in Catholic higher education in the United States since the early 1960s generate fascinating case studies for researchers interested in understanding how Catholic tradition has been understood, changed, and debated within a particular institutional setting—the Catholic university. Except for Norman Francis, the president from 1967 to 2014 of Xavier University of Louisiana, a historically black and Catholic university, no Catholic university president had to navigate these turbulent waters of change for as long as Father Theodore M. Hesburgh did, the president of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana from 1952 to 1987. Father Wilson D. Miscamble, a historian and also, like Hesburgh, a member of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, assumed the formidable task of chronicling and evaluating Hesburgh’s leadership during those thirty-five years and beyond, until Hesburgh died on February 26, 2015, at the age of 96. Miscamble divides his book into two parts, one ad intra and the other ad extra: the first part focusing on the impact of Hesburgh’s leadership at Notre Dame, and the second on Hesburgh’s relationship with U.S. presidents and popes. As a historian of American foreign policy since World War II and of the role of American Catholics in twentieth-century public life, Miscamble is especially well-positioned to explore Hesburgh’s interactions with U.S. presidents. For those of us who have lived through these decades, this section of Miscamble’s book evokes vivid memories; for those who are younger, they will be highly informative. Miscamble is most at home writing about corridors of political power in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century. Miscamble recognizes that Hesburgh was a dynamic and influential leader, committed to raising the academic quality of Notre Dame and to serving the country he loved. Yet, he describes Hesburgh’s legacy as [End Page 85] conflicted. Joining the liberal forces in the church when he dissented publicly over Humanae Vitae published in 1968, Hesburgh argued for greater reform in the church. His service on presidential task forces to end poverty and racism, and to promote nuclear disarmament and scientific research, further cemented his reputation as a liberal. Miscamble believes that Hesburgh became so enmeshed in the liberal elite establishment that he was unable to interpret the “signs of the times” correctly. Miscamble concludes: [Hesburgh] never sufficiently grasped, as did Pope John Paul II, how the individualism, utilitarianism, and secularism of later modernity represented such a threat to his religion. Nor did he grasp how some of the very liberal elites who lionized him bore a deep-seated hostility to the faithful living out of religious principles” (376). For Miscamble, the 1967 Land O’Lakes Statement was a “declaration of independence” of the Catholic university away from “formal ecclesiastical control” (92). Miscamble never explains what “formal ecclesiastical control” should look like. He believes that its authors, Hesburgh leading them, defended an ill-conceived demand for academic freedom which functioned “without any restraints” (102). Institutional autonomy and academic freedom, however, are complex issues that require more careful analysis than Miscamble gives them. Miscamble never acknowledges that three years after Hesburgh stepped down as Notre Dame’s president, Pope John Paul II’s apostolic constitution on Catholic higher education, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, actually affirmed as essential for a Catholic university both institutional autonomy and academic freedom (with appropriate qualifications). Except for the expectation that theologians request a mandatum from the local bishop to indicate that they are authentic Catholic theologians, Ex Corde did not in fact require any formal ecclesiastical control. Miscamble’s critique of Hesburgh gets personal. He thinks Hesburgh craved the approval of “liberal elites,” both in the secular academy and in government. Beyond just listing Hesburgh’s numerous prestigious awards from prestigious universities and his service to many presidents of the United States, Miscamble judges that Hesburgh “relished...

Female Piety and the Invention of American Puritanism by Bryce Traister

Reviewed by: Female Piety and the Invention of American Puritanism by Bryce Traister Zach Hutchins (bio) Female Piety and the Invention of American Puritanism bryce traister Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016 232 pp. As Bryce Traister rightly notes, an increasingly secular academy now relates to American Puritanism primarily from the perspective of disavowal, rejecting the efforts of John Winthrop and his contemporaries to regulate civic and social life according to the dictates of the Bible as bigoted and narrow-minded. In an exceptionally ambitious book, Traister works to renegotiate our relation to Puritanism, arguing that the seeds of American secularism were sown by the same preachers and magistrates now caricatured as ecclesiastical oppressors and that we might recognize the discourse of dissent and liberty characteristic of modern society in both their language and the language of the women who argued with them. To that end, he presents the New England Way "as both a story of profound and controlling American religiosity and an equally American story of religious tolerance and secularism" (20). [End Page 602] But the New England Way of Traister is very much not the brand of American Puritanism served up by prior generations, which looked to the sermons of John Cotton, Thomas Shepard, John Eliot, and other ministers as the best sources on Puritan thought and culture. Instead, Traister reads the records of five events as indicative of the ways in which radical female piety shaped American Puritanism: Anne Hutchinson's trial, the Quaker invasion of the 1650s and 1660s, the Halfway Covenant of 1662, Mary Rowlandson's captivity, and the Salem witch trials. Christian theology has long placed believers in a feminine position, characterizing the church and its members as the bride of Christ, but Traister suggests that New England Puritans adopted a more radically feminized piety than many other Protestant sects and makes the development of this deeply gendered theology, through key moments when women challenged or questioned their ecclesiastical leaders, central to his secularist thesis. In the five episodes he treats, Traister contends that the feminized piety of seventeenth-century New England Puritans "articulated and helped to imagine categories of personhood, cultural politics (including feminism), psychological realism, and even natural rights discourse we characteristically associate with 'modernity,' 'secularism,' and 'Enlightenment.' By reading the feminine back into Puritanism, we will also be reading religion forward into secularism" (11). Three projects—reading these five key events, tracing the evolution of a feminized piety, and searching for the influence of American Puritanism on modern secularism and postsecularism—are interwoven into a single thesis. Brilliant insights are scattered throughout Traister's work, and it should be required reading for those investigating the texts or historical moments he treats as well as those with an interest in the role of gender in early American literature and theology. Among these many fine moments is a close reading of Rowlandson's Narrative centered on a passage in which Rowlandson compares her desire to look back toward her own town of Lancaster with the desire of Lot's wife to look back toward Sodom. This comparison, Traister notes, positions Lancaster (and New England more generally) as a latter-day Sodom, separating Rowlandson's experience of providential punishment from that of the larger society to which she belongs and establishing her spiritual autonomy. Traister concludes, "Her implied criticism of New England establishes the sovereignty of Mary Rowlandson not just as an author-recorder of her own experiences, but [End Page 603] as a person claiming a personal religious experience independent of New England's spiritual discipline" (154). In a text for which Increase Mather supplied the preface and in which "a more intrusive Matherian presence" has long been suspected, Traister's reading is delightfully subversive, empowering readers to hear Rowlandson speaking to and against the ministerial culture with which her Narrative has long been identified (133). This insight and similarly innovative readings throughout his book should meaningfully shape the ways in which we discuss and teach the texts that Traister examines. However, the larger claims that Traister links together in his introduction and conclusion are more provocative than persuasive. Enough evidence is presented that his claims with respect to American Puritanism, female...

THEORY AND HISTORY OF ART TUITION AT SECULAR AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN THE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURIES

Introduction. The increasing level of technicalization of life and the interest increase towards art highlight a teaching problem in modern Russia of the subjects connected with development of the heritage left by masters of last eras and works of modern writers. It is necessary to provide both new forms and methods of teaching, and judgment of the ways of conducting educational process existing earlier. The aim of the research is to identify specific features of academic subject formation patterns, in particular, the forms and stages of transitioning from random aesthetic knowledge acquisition («perception of beauty») towards more comprehensive curricula saturated with visual and factual information; and the nature of subject-specific tuition. Methodology and research methods involve the retrospective analysis of the archival materials, documents and other sources concerning the declared subject; generalization and projection of experience of the past to modern realities. Results and scientific novelty. The problems of studying of art tuition are considered at the earliest stage of teaching – in the 19th and early 20th century. Educational processes in various educational institutions as secular (Academy of Arts and universities), and religious are described (theological academies and seminaries). The materials of the first congresses of architects and artists, programs of art and pedagogical circles of the beginning of last century and the content of works of certain researchers are analysed. Basic changes in the relation to use of additional illustrative material are shown. Repeatedly expressed public requirements about familiarizing of pupils with art in voluntary to a facultative form are noted. Gradually developing orientation of educational process to teaching history of art is reflected. Poorly studied process of development of works of art within the subject «Church Archaeology» in spiritual academies and seminaries is presented and investigated. Existence of interest towards the monuments of church art in spiritual educational institutions and its earlier denied consecutive development is revealed. Practical significance. On the one hand, the contradiction between the increasing content of teaching history of art, its ambiguity, diversity is formulated; on the other hand, opportunities of perception of so complex material by pupils. The question of need of permission of this contradiction inherited by modern programs from the teaching methods existing earlier which are still used in specialized and non-special educational institutions is raised.

Religion, Philosophy, Scholarship and the Muddles Thereof

For many centuries, the relations between philosophy and religion were very close—at times indistinguishable. That is not so in the modern secular academy, which houses philosophy along with the study of religion but without noticeable mutual relations between the two. Kevin Schilbrack has ably dealt with that situation in his latest publication ‘Philosophy and the Study of Religion’. Schilbrack’s diagnoses are acute and most scholars in the study of religion will consider them worth heeding—except, most likely, his calls for more metaphysical concerns based on ideas of ‘unmediated experience’. His arguments proceed from current philosophical positions and theories of situated cognition and his appeals are quite convincing. However, they do have one remarkable drawback as this critic sees it: That metaphysics move from the ontological realm to the epistemic (!). That is no mean feat, because as no one really seems to know what metaphysics are in this ‘post-metaphysic age’, Schilbrack’s proposal seems to indicate that metaphysics now become humanly approachable and intellectually tractable. As such, they could justifiably become an integral part of the study of religion—as could philosophy.

Læringsarenaer som kan fostre misjonalt lederskap

Learning arenas which may foster missional leadership: Reflections on The Cape Town Commitment’s evangelical and missiological contribution to leadership development This article explores evangelical perspectives on how to foster missional leadership on key learning arenas. The Lausanne Movement is widely regarded as representative for evangelical perspectives, and its roadmap The Cape Town Commitment (CTC) is therefore selected as the material. In line with CTC, missional leaders are viewed as a broad category which includes church and mission leaders, Gospel-inspired social action leaders, and Christian thought-leaders in the public arena. The background is today’s pluralistic and secular context, with ‘the civil public square’ as a desirable common vision. Key evangelical convictions in CTC, shaping the fostering of missional leaders, include the foundational grace of Christ, a classical evangelical theology, a holistic missional approach, and a ‘whole person’ leadership development. The church, theological education, and the academy at large are selected as significant learning arenas in CTC. The church arena, claims CTC, should be shaped by biblical teaching, equipping for apologetics, and a holistic view of calling. As a learning arena, per CTC, theological education needs to have a focus on the missional intention, the missional tasks, and the missional equipping, all of which presuppose the centrality of the Bible. Therefore, every theological education should undertake a «missional revision». In terms of the arena of the academy at large, CTC emphasizes its formative role, stresses the need both for Christian institutions and Christians in the ‘secular academy’, encouraging faith and learning as well as public apologetics. All this leads to final missiological reflections, where it is argued that fostering missional leaders on these arenas (a) is enhanced by an emphasis on «bearing witness to Jesus Christ and all his teaching in every nation, in every sphere of society, and in the realm of ideas», (b) presupposes an understanding of cognitive dissonance as a key challenge in the contemporary secular context, and (c) should include a comprehensive apologetic strategy for all three arenas.

An inadvertent missiologist: Edward Gibbon and the science of mission

Edward Gibbon unintentionally inaugurated the science of mission ( Missionswissenschaft), when he published in 1776 the first volume of his celebrated History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon included in his groundbreaking work a new approach to mission history that emphasized social analysis and cultural change, rather than theology. Gibbon’s secular discourse on the establishment, growth and “triumph” of early Christianity over paganism is highly critical of the faith, in line with his own stance of religious skepticism, but is insightful nevertheless, as he shows how the study of mission from a sociological perspective can shed light on the social processes that often shape evangelistic outcomes. In the Decline and Fall, Gibbon also defined a style of speaking or a discourse about Christian mission that has come to dominate the secular academy today.

The Varthamanappusthakamor Is there Justice for the Narrating Subaltern?

The article examines India's first modern travelogue, The Varthamanappusthakam, from the point of view of narratology and Kanaganayakam's observations on storytelling from the margins. The focus is on the travelogue's narratology, including the story and its narration, and on the discussion it triggers, in a secular academy that is Western or Westernized, with a closed canon that incorporates postcolonial studies. The article draws on, among other things, Gérard Genette's narrative theories and Gerhart Husserl's phenomenological discussion of communities. It makes an argument for the inclusion of a translation of a Christian text from the Indian subcontinent in the curriculum of English Studies as a challenge to preconceived notions of colonial India, thereby providing the required institutional approval that Gayatri Spivak points to.

THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION IN SOUTH AFRICA AND THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL DIVIDE: IN SEARCH OF THE AFRICAN HABITUS

The ethos of the academy in South Africa, as is the case in the West in general, has been shaped profoundly by the Enlightenment. Theological and religious studies in the secular academy have had to conform to this ethos. This has led to the anomalous situation of African students of theology being alienated from their faith at university level despite the fact that the sub-continent appears to be over-whelmingly Christian in its ethos. Theology departments need to take more seriously the epistemological divide between students of theology coming from an African background that has had little or no exposure to the critical approach that emerged within the history of the academy in the West. This does not mean that the critical approach must be abandoned but rather that it should be applied more rigorously to the secular world view of the university itself and recognition given of alternative world views that shape the African habitus. Such forms of contextualisation mean, amongst other things, that a more sympathetic articulation of the faith in African terms needs to be emphasised, the social sciences should not take the place of theology; an alternative, non-secular account of human rights needs to be found, and development discourse needs to take seriously Indigenous Knowledge Systems.

Asian/Asian North American Feminist Theology and the Secular Academy

Asian/Asian North American Feminist Theology and the Secular Academy

Of Intellectual Hospitality: Buddhism and Deconstruction

This paper makes a plea of a stronger ethos of intellectual hospitality in dialogical exchanges between the Western philosophical and non-Western wisdom traditions, focusing in particular on the relationship between (Mahayana) Buddhist teachings and Derridean deconstruction. The main point of reference for this discussion is Zen lineage holder and philosopher, David Loy’s writings that explores the reciprocity between<br />Buddhist and deconstructive understandings to pursue the goal of ‘mutual healing’. Loy’s discourse is in principle a laudable attempt at encouraging a stronger ethos of intellectual hospitality in comparative scholarship. However, I will show that his criticism of deconstruction’s ‘textual idolatry’ betrays an inaccurate, myopic reading of Derrida’s writings. Loy’s discourse thus lapses back into the habit of ontotheological closure, which he claims the Buddhist approach is better at overcoming than deconstruction; and in enacting, if only unwittingly, one-upmanship, it falls short of the proposed goal of ‘mutual healing’. To develop this argument, I first identify intellectual hospitality as a guiding ethos<br />of an emergent discourse called Buddhist critical-constructive reflection, which crossfertilises Buddhist teachings with the knowledge-practices of the secular academy to address current issues. I then outline the key points of consonance between Buddhist and Derridean thinking before problematising Loy’s criticism of deconstruction. After showing how Loy’s proposed objective of ‘mutual healing’ functions instead to stymie<br />dialogue, I chart a way forward towards renewed intellectual hospitality between the two sets of knowledge-practices by submitting for consideration, the ways in which the bodhisattva ideal of the Mahayana and the Derridean = passion for the impossible share a commitment of utter response-ability towards incalculable alterity – a praxis-ideal that<br />may be described as unconditional unconditionality unconditionally

Theological Instruction and Faith Transmission: Lonergan's Method as Pedagogy Theology

Abstract Hans Urs Von Balthasar's lament that coincidence of the theologian and the saint has not been the norm since the Middle Ages can be emblematic of a methodological issue impacting both academic theology and the Church wholly by separation of that which as a faith tenet should be unified—word and witness. Theologians’ intent today to speak from but not be confused with their location, the theological discipline's reach for respectability in an increasingly secular academy, market forces deliberately shrinking theology's influence except in such as interdisciplinary endeavors supporting other publics’ aims, the contemporary narrow specialization of the theologian, and the sometime view that narrow tasks serving theology are theology itself all result in conflations of theology and religion. So “theology” and “spirituality,” as Balthasar identified the breach, will be separate. Yet we hope that theologians, with all others, will be saints. Does this not, particularly to students, transmit the faith? Although Bernard Lonergan's method might seem to exacerbate the separation given its numerous theological specialties and conversion types, it also offers the way of reunification—without threat to academic integrity. The theological method, with its turn to the subject, can ground a theology (and method) of pedagogy.

The Religious Roots of the First Amendment. By Nicholas P. Miller. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. xviii + 250 pp. $35.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Religious Roots of the First Amendment . By Nicholas P. Miller . New York : Oxford University Press , 2012. xviii + 250 pp. $35.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesAnyone who remembers Rodney Dangerfield also remembers his on-stage persona's elusive quest for respect. Anyone having even casual familiarity with the modern secular academy knows that for scholars of American religion, especially those who are believers themselves, Dangerfield's frustrations can seem uncomfortably familiar. George Marsden made the case forcefully in the late 1990s (The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998]). But unlike the comedian's character, who never quite grasped the link between wanting respect and earning it, religious historians over the last two decades have generated a block of scholarly capital that cannot be ignored. A variety of interpretive purposes has guided the work of such notables as Marsden, Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and Grant Wacker, but their collective demand that religious ideas be taken seriously is impressively augmented by Nicholas P. Miller's study of Protestantism's role in shaping the First Amendment.While more than a generation ago historians Bernard Bailyn and Gordon Wood waged a spectacularly successful campaign to place ideas at the center of our understanding of America's Revolutionary and Constitutional past, Miller argues that religious ideas were largely orphaned in the process. Taking as his focus the principles that shaped the founding generation's understanding of First-Amendment freedoms, Miller contends that longstanding scholarly battles to attribute the framers' inspiration to either classical liberalism or republicanism ignores their most important intellectual and cultural resource: the influence if dissenting Protestantism on the colonial and Revolutionary intelligentsia and, most significantly, on the broader American population.Especially important to Miller is upending the well-worn argument that religious leaders became champions of freedom only as secular reasoning subsumed their religious principles or as increasing cultural diversity compelled them toward pragmatic toleration. Such an assumed adversarial relationship between religion and reason, Miller contends, obscures what was in fact a cooperative venture in which historic Protestant principles actually led the charge. In other words, Miller offers a First Amendment derived substantially from religious principles, not in spite of them.His argument rests on historic Protestant commitments to the right of private judgment in matters of faith. He locates the wellspring of this principle in the early work of Martin Luther, citing the theologian's Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520) as being far more influential than his later flares against seditious heresies following the 1524 Peasants' Revolt. Most significantly, Miller sidelines Luther's magisterial Protestant heirs and contends that dissenting Protestant sects made this spiritual individualism politically viable. Quakers and Baptists--not Puritans, Presbyterians or Anglicans--became the primary transatlantic carriers of this tradition to America with Roger Williams, William Penn, and John Locke equipping dissenter principles for much broader cultural and political duty.Dissenters' emphasis on the right of private judgment as the personal, spiritual route to biblical truth gave rise to liberty of conscience as its secular expression, one that ultimately became serviceable in more conservative Protestant enclaves, as well as among the central players in the nation's Constitutional founding, chiefly James Madison. …

Catholic Universities and Ex corde Ecclesiae: Distinctiveness in an Era of the Secular Academy?

Catholic Universities and <i>Ex corde Ecclesiae</i>: Distinctiveness in an Era of the Secular Academy?