Secular Culture Research Articles

Unio mystica. Skabelse af en topos

The secular carpe diem and the religious unio mystica are historically very active in the Renaissance and the Baroque. Both form important steps in the development towards a secularized culture, abandoning the idea of eternal life with the carpe diem, and giving up the ecclesiastical hierarchy in favour of direct contact to God in the unio mystica, cf. Rudolf Otto. The topos unio mystica is restructured and secularized in the “Aleph” by the Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges introducing the complex figure of the repeated visual verb ver combined with a synedochical selection among the entirety of the vision. The complex figure reoccurs in Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, in the Black Book by the Orhan Pamuk, and without the figure in The War at the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa, each of them altering the topos according to their narrative needs. As stated in Ernst Robert Curtius, the topos can be seen as historically variant, and with Marie Lund Klujeff it is proposed that the figure as such can contribute actively in the creation and restructuring of the topos, thus not only being confined to the elocutio, but also contributing to the inventio.

Romaniello, Matthew P. and Starks, Tricia (eds) Russian History through the Senses: From 1700 to the Present (review)

SEER, 95, 3, JULY 2017 560 the elections. It is therefore a pity that she seems not even to have read some of the major works written in Polish on Lithuania in this period, in particular the magisterial study by Henryk Lulewicz, which covers exactly this territory. The same can be said of the discussion of Polish government. The author claims that historians have neglected the fiscal and financial side of the problems faced by the monarchy, but the works by Anna Sucheni-Grabowska, who has analysed the finances of the monarchy and the Polish taxation system in the first half of the sixteenth century in great detail, and others who deal with the execution movement, are absent from the bibliography. There is much of interest in this book, but the execution is flawed at times. University of Aberdeen Robert Frost Romaniello, Matthew P. and Starks, Tricia (eds). Russian History through the Senses: From 1700 to the Present. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2016. xiii + 302 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. £21.99 (paperback). As the author of the Introduction to this collection, Alexander Martin, notes, any depiction of human lives would be incomplete without ‘fleeting elusive feelings and perceptions’ (p. 1). Accounting for them confronts the historian with great challenges. Following the work of the pioneer of the history of senses, the French historian Alain Corbin, Martin maintains that the senses provide ‘an avenue for understanding how people interpret, at a holistic and non-rational level, situations that are difficult or unfamiliar’ (p. 2). The Introduction gives an overview of thematic contexts of the eleven essays, thus trying to give a cohesion to the volume’s content. The essays are divided chronologically into four parts: Imperial Russia, Revolutionary Russia, Soviet Russia and Reconstructing Russia. This categorization provides the reader with little help in conceptualizing the notion of the senses. All four parts include thematically diverse material which, while presenting notable case studies, remain isolated and conceptually unintegrated. The absence of conclusion to the volume underlines the lack of theorizing of ‘the senses’ in Russian history. Romaniello’s ‘Humoral Bodies in Cold Climates’ demonstrates that over the course of the eighteenth century a belief in ‘the descriptive power of the humors’ (p. 37) persisted among Western visitors to Russia. The humoural descriptions of the environment provided foreigners with a tool to understand the influence of the climate upon the body. Alison Smith in ‘Fermentation, Taste and Identity’ demonstrates that in the nineteenth century the lines REVIEWS 561 between the ‘desirable’ and the ‘bad’, ‘pleasantly sour’ and ‘the too’ (p. 59), were based both on individual taste and on cultural norms. Such Russian foods as kvas, rye bread and fermented cabbage were considered too sour by foreigners. This perception has ‘larger implications as these products come up against the boundary of what can be considered food’ (p. 59). Abby Schrader in ‘Market Pleasures and Prostitution’ suggests that in the secularized urban culture of shopping arcades and streets of St Petersburg woman was inscribed both as consumer and commodity which made it harder ‘to tell the girl who worked from a working girl’ (p. 87). Tricia Stark’s ‘The Taste, Smell, and Semiotics of Cigarettes’ shows that at the end of the nineteenth century, brand choice of tobacco made a statement that should be viewed as a sensory performance. The smoker created a blended identity by consuming cosmopolitan brands of tobacco and ‘embodied a global, imperial vision of Russian identity’ (p. 111). Laurie Stoff’s ‘The Sounds, Odors, and Textures of Russian Wartime Nursing’ seeks ‘to integrate multiple sensory perceptions into descriptions of war experience’ (p. 119) and examines both physical and illusionary perceptions, suggesting that this helps to better understand the effect on the women who served as wartime nurses. Aaron Retish’s ‘The Taste of kumyshka and the Debate over the Udmurt Culture’ maintains that discussions of kumyshka and Udmurts in late imperial and early Soviet Russia can be understood by examining the taste of the drink. Its sensation became ‘a symbol for various social and political groups to debate the role of non-Russians (p. 157). The drink became a cultural sign of backwardness and otherness...

Revolutionary Fundraising and Global Networks: A Micro‐Economic Approach to the Social Meaning of Money and Mobilization before the Second World War

AbstractAlready decades ago Jonathan Frankel found that Russian ‘[r]evolutionary organizations depended to an extraordinary extent on the ebb and flow of fundraising’. This even increased in independent Poland where, for instance, the large school‐network TSISHO constantly required massive inflow of funds raised abroad. Among the many emigrants from Russia, Bundists overseas were especially successful fundraisers. For thousands of them, fundraising became the single most important mode of maintaining ties with a movement in which they had developed their distinct identities and which many of them sought to revitalize on distant shores. To date not a single study has asked for the backgrounds and the effects of this crucial and transnationally interdependent activism. It started with monodirectional transfers and developed into multiple forms of exchange, including ideas, organisational patterns, materials and manpower. Over the decades preceding the Second World War it constantly increased due the Bund's increasing engagement with a socialist and secular global Jewish culture. Finally it propelled the recreation of some of the movement's most successful branches in the New World. Yet, despite the common context, the practices and effects of such initiatives in the United States differed drastically from those in Argentina. Based on extensive source work in local archives, this article explores the extent and relevance of Bundist fundraising in different societies. As a result it will present a comparative perspective on practices of Bundist transnational solidarity and thereby scrutinize our understanding of the presence of eastern Europe as a factor in global history – and the other way around. This global perspective also aims in another direction. For decades historians of the Russian Revolution – as well as of revolutions and social movements in general – have been engaged in debates about who organized the movement, who ran the revolution and which micro‐ or macro level dynamics were decisive. However, we have never seriously asked who paid for the revolution and what consequences the collection of money has in revolutionary movements. The economic history of revolution still needs to be written. This article aims to be first step in this direction.

The Evangelical Age of Ingenuity in Industrial Britain. By Joseph Stubenrauch

This study of the interaction between the secular culture of modernity and the faith commitment of those Christians formed in the Evangelical Revival brings together aspects of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century often seen as in tension, the one hostile to the other. Thus Joseph Stubenrauch argues that Evangelicalism was partly shaped by the secular culture of an emerging urban industrial world, as in part it helped to mould it, as evangelical activists exploited ‘means’ and ‘instruments’ within the new world to spread evangelical influence; hence the title of this study, in which the author argues that evangelicals, far from fearing the radical changes overtaking society, ‘eagerly sought to capitalize on them and to contribute to them’. Declaring their own era to be ‘the age of ingenuity’, they harnessed commerce, decorations, mass print, and urbanization to the work of salvation (p. 2). Evangelicalism is seen not merely as an instrument of class, race, jingoism, and social control (functions which from time to time it did serve) but as an empowering agent enabling many from the working classes to achieve more control over their destinies.

Designing the suburban church: the mid twentieth-century Roman Catholic churches of Reynolds & Scott

The pioneering modern movement, liturgically centred, church architecture of the mid twentieth century has become increasingly well documented and understood. Yet, for a long time before the Second Vatican Council most architects and clergy rejected this movement, maintaining traditional approaches and architectural forms. The basilican type dominated Roman Catholic church architecture in mid twentieth-century Britain, drawing loosely on Gothic or Byzantine and Romanesque models, and widely built in the new suburbs of expanding cities. As a typical landmark feature of such suburbs, the conventional church demands to be taken seriously and understood. This article draws on recent work on suburban and middle-class culture to interpret a body of such churches by a prolific firm of church architects, Reynolds & Scott of Manchester. It makes use of a hitherto unexplored archive of the practice's drawings, an interview with a surviving partner, parish and diocesan archives, and consideration of many of the buildings. The conventional basilican church can be reassessed through this evidence. It presents a type of creativity and a design approach that differ from the values embraced by modernism, but that nevertheless engage with the modernity of the suburb in a complex hybridity between the modern and traditional, the sacred and the secular, religious and domestic cultures, the particular, the transnational and the universal.

Experiences of Judeo-Christian Students in Undergraduate Biology.

A major research thrust in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education is focused on how to retain students as STEM majors. The accumulation of seemingly insignificant negative experiences in STEM classes can, over time, lead STEM students to have a low sense of belonging in their disciplines, and this can lead to lower retention. In this paper, we explore how Judeo-Christian students in biology have experiences related to their religious identities that could impact their retention in biology. In 28 interviews with Judeo-Christian students taking undergraduate biology classes, students reported a religious identity that can conflict with the secular culture and content of biology. Some students felt that, because they are religious, they fall within a minority in their classes and would not be seen as credible within the biology community. Students reported adverse experiences when instructors had negative dispositions toward religion and when instructors were rigid in their instructional practices when teaching evolution. These data suggest that this may be a population susceptible to experiences of cultural conflict between their religious identities and their STEM identities, which could have implications for retention. We argue that more research should explore how Judeo-Christian students' experiences in biology classes influence their sense of belonging and retention.

Is the bias for function-based explanations culturally universal? Children from China endorse teleological explanations of natural phenomena

Young children in Western cultures tend to endorse teleological (function-based) explanations broadly across many domains, even when scientifically unwarranted. For instance, in contrast to Western adults, they explicitly endorse the idea that mountains were created for climbing, just like hats were created for warmth. Is this bias a product of culture or a product of universal aspects of human cognition? In two studies, we explored whether adults and children in Mainland China, a highly secular, non-Western culture, show a bias for teleological explanations. When explaining both object properties (Experiment 1) and origins (Experiment 2), we found evidence that they do. Whereas Chinese adults restricted teleological explanations to scientifically warranted cases, Chinese children endorsed them more broadly, extending them across different kinds of natural phenomena. This bias decreased with rising grade level across first, second, and fourth grades. Overall, these data provide evidence that children’s bias for teleological explanations is not solely a product of Western Abrahamic cultures. Instead, it extends to other cultures, including the East Asian secular culture of modern-day China. This suggests that the bias for function-based explanations may be driven by universal aspects of human cognition.

HISTORICAL CHANGES OF SOCIAL FUNCTIONS OF RELIGION (INDIVIDUAL ASPECT)

The article analyzes the interdisciplinary aspects of the methodology of history connected with the social functions of religion. It is a question of the historicity and relevance of the major problems of human existence. These problems and ways of its solution are important not only in the religious but also in the secular culture. General theoretical reasoning is based primarily on the materials of the Abrahamic religions, including Islam.

Passover and Hanukkah in A. B. Yehoshua's Opus and Ethos

To explore whether secular culture in Israel can be more than a "thin brittle crust" that will crumble "at a time of crisis or conflict," A. B. Yehoshua constructs fictional scenarios in which holidays are celebrated under particularly stressful circumstances for his characters. A Late Divorce (1982) races toward a Passover seder and engages systematically with this holiday's theme of freedom. Friendly Fire (2007) is set during Hanukkah and tallies each candle that Amotz Ya'ari lights with family members in Israel, while his wife lights none in Africa. Yehoshua's two historical novels, Mr Mani (1990) and A Journey to the End of the Millennium (1997), incorporate the high holiday season into their plots, generating a historiosophic conversation about Jewish beliefs and behaviors in the past and the present. Although Yehoshua's holiday scenarios undermine religious belief, his engagement with them actually aims to reinvigorate the relevance of historical markers of Jewish identity. He argues that national reform does not entail "easing the burden imposed by religion," but rather exposure of the traditional commandments "to the complexities of life, to observe them while changing them." Yehoshua's holiday scenarios thus operate as much more than mere folkloric backdrop to position his fiction within a Jewish timeframe: he uses holiday settings to critique traditional practices and beliefs, yet he does so to paradoxically strengthen a modern program of national Jewish reformation. This essay showcases Yehoshua's critique of national identity through holiday scenarios in A Late Divorce (Passover) and Friendly Fire (Hanukkah).

From Silence to Golden: The Slow Integration of Instruments into Christian Worship

The Christian church’s stance on the use of instruments in sacred music shifted through influences of church leaders, composers, and secular culture. Synthesizing the writings of early church leaders and church historians reveals a clear progression. The early musical practices of the church were connected to the Jewish synagogues. As recorded in the Old Testament, Jewish worship included instruments as assigned by one’s priestly tribe. Eventually, early church leaders rejected that inclusion and developed a rather robust argument against instruments in liturgical worship. The totalitarian stance on musical instruments in sacred worship began to loosen as the organ increased in use and popularity. Organs began to find a more regular place in churches by the twelfth century. While organ music set a precedent which will later allow for the entry of other instruments into the sanctuary, it took quite a while to do so. As the Protestant Reformation changed the face of the church, Martin Luther served a crucial role, not just as a theological leader, but also as the center of a new musical movement in the church. This Reformation began a series of reactions that eventually leads to the church’s general acceptance of instruments in sacred worship.

Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan During Reconstruction by Elaine Frantz Parsons

Reviewed by: Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan During Reconstruction by Elaine Frantz Parsons Mark Elliott Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan During Reconstruction. By Elaine Frantz Parsons. ( Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015. Pp. [xii], 388. $34.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-2542-3.) Elaine Frantz Parsons has written a provocative reevaluation of the Ku Klux Klan that is essential reading for anyone studying the Reconstruction South. Not since Allen W. Trelease published White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Consp iracy and Southern Reconstruction (New York, 1971) has a scholar offered such an important overall assessment of the first Klan and its significance. While acknowledging the "brilliant, exhaustive, and painstakingly careful" research of Trelease's classic study, Parsons asks new questions and reaches new conclusions by analyzing evidence from multiple vantage points through the lens of cultural history (p. 16). The result is a new perspective on the Klan phenomenon of 1866-1872 that promises to transform the way historians understand the meaning of this infamous chapter in American history. Parsons wisely distinguishes between the imagined Klan that was largely constructed through public discourse in newspaper accounts and editorials, and the actual acts of violence, intimidation, and political theater attributed to a single organization known as the "Ku-Klux" (p. 7). Plainly skeptical of claims to extensive organizational formation, Parsons focuses the majority of her study on interpreting the power of the public discourse about the Klan. In her estimation, the violence of the Klan, and Klan-like groups, ought to be viewed as just one temporary manifestation of extralegal mob violence that was commonly employed for the purposes of community and racial control in the South. "Klan" activity in many places was little more than a single night of raiding, with purposes that were often driven by long-standing local conflicts. Evidence of broad coordination is scant and highly dubious, but Parsons shows that the "real" Klan and the imagined one were interdependent. As sensationalized accounts about the Klan proliferated in early 1868, so did acts that adopted the well-publicized trappings of the Klan, which fed into the public narrative of a vast conspiracy and widely coordinated campaign. Because the Ulysses S. Grant administration set out to substantiate evidence of a vast organization, subsequent historical accounts, including Trelease's, naturally place the search for organization and coordination at the center of inquiry. Parsons reframes the story as one about a compelling media sensation that inspired widespread imitation, that reshaped northern perceptions about southern [End Page 441] white communities, and that ultimately served to portray freedpeople as helpless and dependent on government support. Parsons believes the Klan served as a "modernizing" force for white southerners, bringing the rural South into a secular national culture (p. 12). The fascination of the northern press inadvertently facilitated the symbolic restoration of white masculinity and solidarity. Moreover, she shows that northern commentary on the Klan began to shift after the Enforcement Acts of 1870-1871, becoming more sympathetic to those prosecuted under the laws' strict prescriptions as being denied a fair trial. At the same time, the graphic descriptions of Klan violence that dominated the early newspaper coverage declined. In a bold departure from the rest of her study, Parsons undertakes in her final two chapters a case study of Union County, South Carolina, demonstrating the relationship between the idealized Klan of the national discourse and the local realities on the ground. Employing a sophisticated network analysis, Parsons impressively reconstructs the social world of Union County with software-generated data and visual mapping. Charting relationships and degrees of association, she paints a convincing picture of the likely participants in the local Klan raids that highlights their local concerns and the continuum of Klan violence within long-standing local conflicts. One caveat of this extremely valuable study is that it does not attempt to retell a full narrative of the Klan's role within the political context of Reconstruction, and it generally addresses itself to scholars and specialists, which limits its use in the undergraduate classroom. Mark Elliott University of North Carolina at Greensboro Copyright © 2017 The Southern Historical Association

Working Class Children, Death and Secularity: Belgium in the 1890s

The non-religious burial of children has never been studied so far. The topic sheds some new light upon the history of secular funerary culture in Belgium. In 1897, two cases of civil funerals of adolescents (one in Ghent, the other in Mechelen), both in urban settings where the cemetery issue had long received secular solutions by liberal city authorities, led to harsh press polemics and public manifestations, eventually culminating in parliamentary interpellations of the Catholic government by the left opposition parties. In both cases, issues were at stake regarding the nature of these funerals (with old discursive demons showing themselves again) and the possibility of selfdetermination for minors (i. e. the refusal of a priest by one of the dying youngsters, which gave that burial a very particular ring). At the same time, adult role models and secular militancy were at the heart of these polemics as well. In both cases, the contested nature of the funerals proved to be a means for Belgian Catholics to attack public education as an alleged de-Christianising force leading children into eternal damnation.

遺體捐獻行為的中國文化困境

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.在中國文化中，保留個人軀體的完整性具有重要意義，這導致醫學教學和科研中的屍源短缺現象成為制約醫學發展的一大問題。中國傳統文化一直被各界認為是阻礙遺體捐獻的根源，但本文基於訪談和文獻分析，發現導致這一現象的原因遠較傳統文化的影響更為複雜，其核心問題在於子女與父母在看待身體、死亡和“孝”上存在的多元價值觀衝突。價值觀衝突的文化根源不僅是多數研究指認的儒家傳統文化，而是一個包含著傳統文化、現代文化、精英文化與世俗文化相互交融和衝突的複雜問題。同時，兩者雖然在觀念上存在矛盾衝突，但所追求的終極目標具有高度一致性，即實現人的“尊嚴”。In Chinese culture, the preservation of the integrity of the body is greatly significant, which has led to a shortage of corpses in medical teaching and research and become a major problem restricting the development of medical research and treatment in China. Accordingly, it is generally believed that traditional Chinese culture has been a barrier to body donation in China. However, based on interviews and literature analyses, this paper shows that the factors leading to the body donation shortage in China are much more complicated than this simple “cultural” belief. The core problem, as our investigation finds, is that children and parents are in conflict over the value of the body and death and the virtue of filial piety. The cultural root of this conflict is not merely the nature or content of the traditional Confucian culture as identified by most researchers. Rather, it is a result of the complex interplay between modern scientific, revolutionary and traditional ethical views on the role of the body, the function of the Chinese patriarchal clan system and the blending of elastic spirit and modern secular culture. Finally, the paper argues that although donators and their children may have different understandings and value conflicts, their ultimate goal is highly consistent, that is, to achieve human dignity as expressed in modern Chinese society.DOWNLOAD HISTORY | This article has been downloaded 6231 times in Digital Commons before migrating into this platform.

A Future Without Hate or Need: The Promise of the Jewish Left in Canada by Ester Reiter

Reviewed by: A Future Without Hate or Need: The Promise of the Jewish Left in Canada by Ester Reiter Hadassa Kosak Ester Reiter, A Future Without Hate or Need: The Promise of the Jewish Left in Canada (Toronto: Between the Lines 2016) This is a study of the forging and flourishing of Jewish immigrant left culture in Canada beginning in the early 1920s, concluding with its decline (though not demise) following the dramatic revelation of the Soviet betrayal of the Jewish cause in 1956. The left secular culture had its origins in the breakdown of the traditional religious Jewish culture and of its attendant social structures within the communities of Eastern Europe, and in the mass migration to North America sparked by the pogroms and proletarianization of the Jewish masses. The newcomers to North America constructed a new secular identity based on the merging of Yiddish-based culture and politics. The immigrants shared a common tradition, language, and familiarity with cultural and political references, the latter acquired during the politically tumultuous years leading to the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Significantly, the shared historical experience of Jewish Communists in the US and in Canada as an oppressed ethnic group and as an oppressed class defined their political struggle for liberation by addressing both dimensions of their identity. The unfolding events in the early years of the Soviet Union, where minorities' rights were recognized and Jewish theatres (Yiddish and Hebrew) and Yiddish literature flourished, were interpreted by many secular Jews as the fulfillment of their hopes. As Itche Goldberg, a well-known Yiddishist, Communist, and activist in both Canada and the US, affirmed in an interview with the author in 1996: "Jewish consciousness led us very naturally to the Soviet Union." (37) The underlying assumption of the study of the Canadian left is the belief that communism held powerful appeal to a broad variety of Jewish political and cultural organizations albeit with varying degrees of acceptance of party dogma. In the words of the historians Matthew Hoffman and Henry Srebrnik, the Soviet Union was a "solar system" offering the possibility of belonging to the communist orbit without the obligations of strict loyalty to Moscow (Hoffman and Srebrnik, eds., A Vanished Ideology: Essays on the Jewish Communist Movement in the English-Speaking World in the Twentieth Century, [Albany: suny Press, 2016], 6). And, as Ester Reiter demonstrates, Jewish organizations inspired by communism were not always extensions of the Party. Rather, they were the products of historical and immigrant experience as "lived" in ethnic enclaves in the cities of North America. The common experience of working in the garment industry and participating in cultural institutions and organizations, some imported but others inspired by local conditions, contributed to the formation of organizations imbued with the spirit of solidarity and progressive ideologies independently of a communist dynamic. The foundation of the culture was Yiddish, the workers' language. While [End Page 307] Yiddish literature was a medium expressing and celebrating universalist concerns for social justice, the Jewish left did not abandon its particularistic Yiddish culture and concerns for national emancipation. This contradiction, when standards of communist dogma were applied, created tensions between the party, the leadership, and the rank and file. There were, for example, cases where a Jewish communist leadership, also known for its uncompromising attachment to Yiddish and Jewish culture, stood at the helm of organizations of non-communist rank-and-file membership being accused of negligence in exerting pressure on the grass roots to conform to the Moscow line. (In similar cases in New York, leadership resorted to quoting Lenin's definition of communist culture as "socialist in content and national in form" to smooth relations with the party at these moments of tension.) The variety of fraternal organizations rendered such demands mostly impractical. Thus, since broadly speaking, the non-aligned secular left played an important but self-driven role in the making of the left culture, the author pays attention to the varieties of socialists and other progressive groups, as well as communists. Importantly, however, she does not shy away from examining the realities of the relations with Moscow, especially in the years 1928 to 1935. She notes, for example, the...

Simon Ortiz’s Poetry of Crisis Ordinariness: Spiritual Uncertainty during a Rosebud Reservation Winter

Simon Ortiz’s Poetry of Crisis OrdinarinessSpiritual Uncertainty during a Rosebud Reservation Winter Reginald Dyck (bio) Key Words Lakota, Native spirituality, South Dakota, trauma … the gloomy dark, a winter that has entered the spirit. I do not know. / I have never known. / I may never know. … the galaxy shifts / … / and we will never quite know. —Simon Ortiz, After and Before the Lightning1 How does Native spirituality feel to a speaker struggling through a bleak Rosebud Reservation winter? “[L]ike sexuality, religion and spirituality also constitute intimate domains of feelings where ‘traumatic events’ are collectively processed and made meaningful, especially in colonial contexts,” Joanna Brooks explains.2 Her concern with spiritual experience in a time of trauma is part of a shift within Native religious studies away from theology or abstract beliefs and “towards close analysis of lived practice.”3 This perspective offers a useful standpoint for considering Simon Ortiz’s (Acoma Pueblo) poetry collection After and Before the Lightning. The title is a Lakota phrase referring to the beginning and end of prairie winters.4 This poetic account expresses the experience of Native spirituality in a difficult context: the harsh Northern Plains winter, the speaker’s distance from his Southwest home and traditions, the everyday trauma of continuing colonization, and also modern secular culture that questions the possibility of spirituality itself. The resulting structure of feeling that the poems present is spiritual uncertainty as the speaker struggles to reconcile belief and experience. Reflecting on the life that falls between autumn and spring, Ortiz depicts spiritual liminality as the poems engage the two meanings of the term apprehension: the act of conceptually grasping something but also the feeling of anxiety because of uncertainty. My argument is that spiritual apprehension in the first sense never fully reassures the speaker’s apprehension in the second. In spite of the book’s structure of hope and promise of spring renewal, the speaker’s experiences of spiritual misgivings during [End Page 1] a Rosebud Reservation winter are not resolved. After and Before the Lightning is marked by a probing experiential investigation of this spiritual problematic as well as a challenge to generic expectations for a hopeful conclusion. What makes the book’s spiritual journey distinctive is Ortiz’s unflinching and unresolved exploration of the disjuncture between belief and experience and the resulting difficulties in sustaining belief. The spiritual uncertainty described takes places within a specific historical context. In her essay “Thinking about Feeling Historical,” Lauren Berlant uses the term “crisis ordinariness” to describe “traumas of the social that are lived through collectively” and that create “the heightened perceptiveness” of the historical conditions one is living through as a group.5 Seldom is anything dramatic reported in After and Before the Lightning, only the day-to-day struggle to make sense of what people, and the speaker himself, are experiencing. The culturally and historically astute quality of Ortiz’s writing creates the heightened perception of everyday spiritual experience that results from “the loss of the freedom to be unconscious about the internal limits to their sovereignty.”6 That is, the speaker is forced into a questioning selfconsciousness because the usual framework for apprehending experience can no longer be unconsciously invoked. The resulting necessity of finding new ways of apprehension gives impetus to this poetry of crisis ordinariness. Traditional spiritual assumptions are no longer givens in this uncertain world, even as the speaker strives to reclaim them. Berlant explains, “Amidst the rise and fall of quotidian intensities a situation arises that provokes the need to think and adjust, to slow things down and to gather things up, to find things out and to wonder and ponder. What’s going on?”7 This is the key question for this book, its structure of feeling. This essay’s first main section sets forth the various contexts that shape the spiritual uncertainty the speaker experiences. Each of the sections that follow explores a section of the book. Rather than a pattern of struggle and resolution, the analysis finds themes and variations: efforts to connect quotidian experience to the cosmos, the harsh conditions of everyday life, the problem of making sense of these experiences and conditions, and, again, the...

Мусульманское общество между фундаментализмом и либерализмом: проблема гражданского общества

The author examines the issue of civil society in the Muslim world in general and in Russia in particular. It received a special significance after the Cold War, when liberal democracy and the concept of civil society were proclaimed as universal models, able to explain features of the modernization process. Research and practical realization of this process in non-Western societies is strongly influenced by the identification of the institution of civil society with the Western post-Christian civilization, with liberal political culture. However, historical experience shows that civil society cannot be transferred from a different social environment, it must grow on its own culture. This totalizing universalistic thinking and the functionalist-evolutionist modernization approaches are not conducive to finding an answer to the question of the existence of civil society in non-Western societies. It needs a civilizational approach, a historical analysis of cultural contexts of occurring processes of modernization, establishing a market economy, democratic political regimes and civil society. The contemporary postmodern discourse supposes civilizational multiplicity of political modernity and political modernization process. The key in these circumstances is a question about the peculiarities of the coexistence in the modern world societies at different stages of social development. In particular, it is necessary to take into account the possible coexistence of several pre secular cultures (Islamic, Confucian) and liberal democracy as post secular phenomenon.

Educación, laicismo y socialismo en la Argentina: las organizaciones de maestros y profesores entre 1955 y 1983

This article analyzes the secularist movement characteristics in Argentina from 1955 to 1983. It was composed by a group of normal school teachers affiliated with the Socialist Party, which had Domingo Faustino Sarmiento as its main reference. Based on the study of La Vanguardia and Consudec newspapers, among others, it is observe in what type of organizations they were - especially the Argentinean Confederation of Professors and teachers and the Secular Culture Argentina League-What was the model of secular education proposed, who were their main leaders, in what national and international networks they participated and what was the role played by these two groups in the process of secularization.

Seminary Formation: Recent History, Current Circumstances, New Directions by Katarina Schuth

Reviewed by: Seminary Formation: Recent History, Current Circumstances, New Directions by Katarina Schuth Gregory J. Fairbanks Seminary Formation: Recent History, Current Circumstances, New Directions. By Katarina Schuth. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2016. 212pp. $24.95. Seminary Formation: Recent History, Current Circumstances, New Directions by Katarina Schuth, is an update of an earlier work. The author has spent most of her professional life in seminary formation, and is recognized as an expert in the sociology of religion. Schuth begins with setting the historical context of seminary formation with the themes developed in Optatam Totius (Decree on Priestly Training). During the years immediately following the Council, the U.S. Bishops issued successive versions of the Program for Priestly Formation (PPF, now in its fifth edition), updating seminary training. Schuth notes that the direct references to Vatican II documents in each edition has decreased with more references to post-conciliar documents such as Pastores dabo Vobis (John Paul II, 1992). Among the emphases that have shifted are the lessening of service-oriented pastoral formation and the centrality of the historical critical method of exegesis for Sacred Scripture, and a re-introduction of the centrality of Thomas Aquinas. She observes that the changes have corresponded to a generational shift of bishops and faculty who were not involved with the Council and its reception. The leadership of seminaries have changed over the past fifty years, with increasing numbers of staff and the growing importance of governing boards. Accreditation agencies, such as the Association of Theological Schools, have both increased an ecumenical viewpoint and focused attention on structure and finances. As the Vatican II generation has retired, the makeup of faculties has shifted to more diocesan priests and laity (men and women), and fewer religious (order priests and sisters). The student bodies of seminaries have become increasingly international, as the population has shifted and fewer young American Catholics practice their faith. Human and Spiritual formation, parts of the four pillars of seminary formation identified by the PPF, have developed quite a bit since [End Page 102] Vatican II, especially in light of Pastores dabo Vobis, as well as the sexual abuse crisis, the change in the age and ethnic makeup of seminarians, the flux of seminary faculty and administration, and the changing roles of priests as their numbers decrease. Seminaries mostly have dedicated staff for each area of formation and treat the Human and Spiritual dimensions with increased attention. The Intellectual and Pastoral dimensions have also developed and grown. The number of required academic credit hours has increased, as have the number of hours spent on supervised pastoral ministry practica. In the final section of the book, Schuth and several other authors offer their perspectives on the current and future needs for seminary formation. She observes the ongoing centrality of a pastoral mandate in seminary formation since Vatican II and recommends a constant review of seminary formation for the current context, including the growth of the secular culture and an honest appraisal of what has alienated so many Catholics who have left the faith, as well as an evaluation of ministerial effectiveness. A generation gap among the clergy is also recognized, both in terms of perception and implementation of ministry. Schuth, and even more the other contributors, note with concern an increase of clericalism among seminarians and younger priests. She recommends seminarians and lay ministers ought to be taught together the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for authentic collaboration, particularly as called for in Co-Workers in the Vineyard of the Lord (USCCB, 2005). A focused approach in all levels of seminary formation is needed to achieve this goal, which should include ongoing faculty development. Finally, she recommends maintaining admission standards, despite the insufficient number of candidates. After the author, five more veteran seminary officials offer their recommendations on the needs of seminary formation. These include commentaries by religious order men and women, priests and laity. As a sociologist, Katarina Schuth offers a meticulously studied summary of the U.S. seminary system over the last fifty years in a succinct, accessible manner. The evaluations and recommendations offered in the final section make for the most interesting reading for those concerned for seminary life. The recommendations offered...

Global Frequency: Thirteen Ways of Listening to a Blackbird

8 WLT SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2017 photo : andrew cagle global frequency Thirteen Ways of Listening to a Blackbird by Rob Vollmar Hello Psychaleppo Toyour Hello Psychaleppo’s third release, Toyour , draws inspiration from a wide variety of sources, some musical, some literary , and all celebrating the rich cultural history of the Arab world. The “band” is the brainchild of composer Samer Eldahr, a Syrian now triply displaced as he fled to Jordan to escape the erupting violence in his homeland before moving on to Beirut and, finally, to Minnesota, where he currently resides. While his first two albums reflect the rigors of keeping a dance floor packed and in motion, Toyour finds Eldahr in a more contemplative and experimental mood. For this record, Eldahr turned to a classic collection of parables, Mant ˙ iq-ut ˙ T ˙ ayr (Eng. The Conference of the Birds, 2017), first composed by Syrian poet Attar of Nishapur in the twelfth century. The album’s title, Toyour, means “bird” in Arabic and is referenced most directly in the album’s opening track, “Anqa” (Phoenix). This majestic piece rises like the titular mythical beast with ambient noise, bird calls, and chord swells until the chirpy melody and sound bed are dropped seamlessly into a propulsive drum pattern. About two minutes into the track, the unmistakable voice of fellow Syrian and fellow refugee Asmahan rises up through the mix—a moving song about birds recontexted more than eighty years distant from the original recording, subsequently planted into a bed of terse chords and, in time, a more syncopated and urgent beat. Clocking in at just under five minutes, the composition swerves through numerous tempo and timbral shifts while impressing with its canny sense of the cinematic. Eldahr’s presence as a composer and performer outshine his considerable gifts as an arranger on Toyour, and the result is a record that has far more in common with electronica pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre than Skrillex. The track “7am” stands out as a particular tour de force. The piece is built up around a recording of Syrian singer and composer Bakri al-Kurdi, distressed by effects until almost unrecognizable as a voice. Midway through the piece, Eldahr provides a vocal melody, itself distorted by the use of a vocoder, but aching in the way it deftly puts the semitones for which Arab music is known proudly on display. All this is framed by quacky synthesizer tones perhaps once intended to simulate steel drums and strings but now charming on their own merits. There are layers upon layers like this within every song to peel away and admire. These two songs provide a blueprint for understanding the album as a whole. Each track is built around some audio artifact from twentieth-century Arab music that also references birds. Though these interwoven performances may not “read” to the uninitiated listener beyond sounding cool, the album breathes new life into music that was produced during what many remember as a golden age for secular culture in the Arab world—a world that has since been consumed by violence-driven political corruption, religious polarization, yawning economic inequities, and a corrosive erosion of democratic and egalitarian ideals. As the listener unravels the skein that leads back to each piece of imported material, Eldahr’s profound love and pride for the centuries of rich culture that underpin his own efforts as a composer are unmistakable. Rob Vollmar is WLT’s book review editor. Notebook ...

Human Dignity: the Foundation of Human Rights and Religious Freedom

The concept of human dignity lies at the heart of many national and international conventions of human rights. This idea, based on man's rationality, can be found already in Greco-Roman Antiquity, was fully developed in Christianity, in its synthesis with the Biblical conception of man as image of God. With the secularization of the European mind from the 18th century onwards, the justification of human dignity becomes problematic. This most influential attempt to justify it by secular rationality came from Kant, who saw man’s dignity as deriving from his capacity for moral reasoning and from it came the notions of autonomy and equality. However, during the last two centuries, secularized cultures produced skeptical attitudes toward both the Judeo-Christian and Kantian concepts of the intrinsic dignity of man, which eventually paved the way for twentieth-century totalitarian-isms. After the horrors of Nazism, concerns about putting human rights in the centre of culture, politics and law compelled a search ―largely impossible― for a common idea of human dignity, shared by different philosophical traditions, both religious and secular. During the years after World War II, especially after the Second Vatican Council, there was a renewed discovery of human rights as based on human dignity by Catholicism, which, in view of the different reduc-tionist or destructive tendencies found in the secularized culture, perhaps is the most satisfactory approach. Finally, the problem of religious freedom is examined as a case study for further reflections on human dignity.