Secular Discourse Research Articles

A possible Buddhist influence on Chinese political thought

ABSTRACTProponents of twentieth century Chinese critiques of pre-modern Chinese autocracy could point to one or two earlier examples of negative views of autocratic rule, but the ultimate origin of these views has been hard to identify. In pre-modern Chinese accounts of the beginnings of human society, the position of ruler was generally described as an institution established as it were from above, by ‘sages,’ or perhaps by Heaven. Buddhism has by contrast a more negative account of the origins of kingship as representing an expedient, collective human response to problems of social conflict. The introduction into apparently secular discourse during Tang times of an account of the origins of kingship lacking any role for ‘sages’ or for Heaven is therefore tentatively attributed here to tacit Buddhist influence. It is suggested that quite possibly Buddhist ideas can lie behind texts that do not exhibit Buddhist modes of expression, and that such may be the case for this author on kingship, Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 (773–819).

Natura Sanat: On Ecological Aspects of Healing Miracles in Kalwaria Pacławska, Poland

The subject-matter of my article is a change affecting the discourse on miraculous healings in a Catholic Marian sanctuary – Kalwaria Pacławska – run by Franciscan friars in the South-Eastern Poland and a way in which those changes affect pilgrims’ bodies. In Kalwaria Pacławska there meet, intersect and compete various religious and secular discourses and they all influence emotions and bodily sensations accompanying pilgrimage to this sacred site. One of those discourses has been introduced to Kalwaria just recently. The central element of the sanctuary is the miraculous image of Virgin Mary which is the goal of numerous pilgrimages from both Poland and Ukraine. After the publication of the encyclical Laudato si’ by Pope Francis, the Franciscans at the sanctuary began to emphasize the influence of nature on miracles in Kalwaria. They successfully created a religious ecological discourse on nature which supports miraculous healings and make people feel the natural energy in the sanctuary. On the day of their patron saint (4th October) in 2015 Franciscans erected a new chapel of St Francis who has patronage over ecologists. Since then they have consequently continued to put the stress on the beauty of nature and its impact on sanctity of the place. Resulting from this the sanctuary is chosen by the faithful as the goal of their pilgrimage not only because of the miraculous image's fame, but also due to the natural surroundings of the sanctuary. These are believed to be supporting God's power of healing according to the Franciscans and by the faithful attending their sermons. They also describe the very place, i.e. Kalwaria, as closer to God, since its natural environment is depicted as almost original, unspoiled God’s creation. Healing is no longer an exclusive matter of the miraculous image, but also of the place which has a healing potential deriving directly from the reservoir of nature which directly affects pilgrims’ bodies, their feelings and emotions. The sensational forms (B. Meyer) and their influence are now interpreted not only within religious framework, but also ecological one.

Somewhere Between Love and Justice: a Roman Catholic Church in Paris Responds to the European Migration Crisis

The European migration crisis has had a transformative impact on many transit and destination localities in Europe, and in doing so it has mobilised many faith-based communities. This paper analyses the social action of Saint Bernard de La Chapelle, a Roman Catholic parish in northern Paris, which hosts a semi-formal association called Solidarités Saint Bernard (SSB) involved in support and relief activities for indigent migrants in the local area. Based on ethnographic research conducted within the parish and the association, I analyse how the topic of migration has become a point of exchange between the parish community and local civil society, how religious and secular discourses and motivations co-exist within SSB, and how these influences shape SSB’s social action. Through this micro-scale approach, and drawing on Luc Boltanski’s theoretical framework of regimes of action, my aim is to identify conceptual elements to better understand the broad convergence between religion, social action, and migration, and to better understand the relation between charity and justice within faith-based social action in the domain of migration advocacy more specifically.

The Historical Study of Scripture - Historians and Believers, Issues and Implications

Since the Enlightenment, scriptural discourse in the West has been generally limited to the historicity of texts. Although this is a valid and necessary method to study the history of scripture, more is needed. Following Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916-2000), this paper argues that human involvement with scriptural text is more important than the study of the texts evolution. Smith believed that human involvement with scripture is not theological but historical as it often focuses on the historicity of the text. Further, following Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), the paper argues that philosophy does not have jurisdiction to judge religion except to disclose the hidden dimensions of human thought. With these two insights in mind, the paper calls on believers to make their scripture(s) central to their religious life and not be overly concerned with the historical evolution of their texts. This requires critiquing the secular discourse of religion and defining new conditions of religious discourse, such that religion enacts the transformation and guidance of man’s inner and outer life

How to speak of God? Toward a postsecular apologetics

ABSTRACTAgainst most expectations religion has not vanished from Western culture. If anything, it exercises a greater fascination than ever before. Broadly, we might think of ourselves as occupying a new, ‘postsecular’ space between a renewed visibility of religion in public life, and a corresponding acknowledgement of the importance of religious values and actors; and persistent and widespread disillusion and scepticism towards religion, and objections to religion as a source of legitimate public discourse. In a world that is more sensitive than ever to religious belief and practice, yet often struggles to accommodate it into secular discourse, how do religious institutions justify their position in a contested and volatile public square? This article argues that the contemporary postsecular context requires a recovery of the ancient practices of Christian apologetics as a form of public, theological witness to the practical value of faith, articulated in both deed and word.

CONFLICT OF LIGHT SOCIETY AND RELIGION: FROM 11 SEPTEMBER OF NEW YORK TO THE BLACK FRIDAY OF PARIS

The proposed article highlights the secular and religious conflict in the context of modern Western society in the concept of Jurgen Habermas and Daniele Hervieu-Leger. An assessment is given of the problem of the integration of Muslim communities in the French society of the late 20th century, and examples are given. Particular attention is paid to the crisis of secular regulation of religion in modern society. The German sociologist and philosopher Jurgen Habermas notes the complex intertwining of the secular and religious in the events and reactions of September 11, 2001. If the religious motivations of the actions and beliefs of terrorists that have made a lethal weapon civilian airliners with passengers, sending them to the symbol of the international global business system – the twin towers of the World Trade Center, leaves no doubt. All the more surprising was the reaction to this extraordinary event, which contained a significant religious component in the official events and reactions of the civil society. In this context, the opinion of the French sociologist Daniele Hervieu-Leger is close, which analyzes the problem of the regulation of religious organizations by secular French society and sees the reason for its dysfunction in the disparity between the model of “religious organization” adopted by the secular state. Islam is the first religion in France 1990–2000, which does not fit in with the traditional for French domestic politics, and the problems of interaction of believers in a secular society (administration, school, etc.) are only growing. In the fifteen years that have elapsed since the time when Jurgen Habermas delivered his speech, the situation, on the one hand, has changed and worsened, on the other, fully confirms the conclusions made by the philosopher. In light of the problem of “invasion” of refugees, the predicted, but occurred with the complete unpreparedness of the French authorities and law enforcement agencies to react to it promptly, the terrorist act of “Black Friday November 13, 2015” – once again demonstrated the clash of religious and secular discourses. The European symbolism of the “bad name” of Friday the thirteenth, which does not have direct symbolism in the Muslim and Jewish world, used by the developers of the terrorist act, was designed to fuel panic in the European thinking ordinary citizen – a potential victim of the terrorist attack. The material is provided useful for comparative studies of the religious situation in Russia and Western Europe.

Alternative Rites of Passage: Faith, rights, and performance in FGM/C abandonment campaigns in Kenya

ABSTRACTAlternative Rites of Passage (ARP) are touted by NGOs and international donors as an alternative to female initiation into womanhood, but without female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/FGC). They are becoming increasingly popular in Kenya, and with donors funding global campaigns against FGM. In these ceremonies and the instruction that precedes them, girls’ human rights (mainly to life, health, education, protection) and cultural rights (manifested in teachings and ritual elements that aim to mimic the cultural traditions of the community concerned) are intertwined in one social space. ARP is discussed here in the broader context of constitutional change that has introduced the concept of cultural rights to Kenyan citizens, while simultaneously outlawing harmful cultural practices. However, the meaning of ‘culture’ within ARP is rarely defined by external or internal actors. Moreover, the central role of Christian faith leaders – especially Pentecostal – in ARP tends not to be regarded as cultural by local actors, including NGOs, and is largely overlooked in the scanty literature. This article argues that faith leaders’ contribution to ARP constitutes significant ritualised cultural performance, but religious messages do not necessarily sit well with the more secular discourses of rights and law around FGM. ARP may be read as a newly-invented ritual that aims to replicate aspects of traditional initiation. In so doing, pick-and-mix notions of pastness, culture, social transformation and tradition are being incorporated into a hybridised ritual that its proponents present as evidence of development and modernity, and a ‘harmless’ alternative to FGM.

Net Neutrality, the Fairness Doctrine, and the NRB: The Tension between United States Religious Expression and Media Regulation

This article analyzes the historical continuity between the opposition of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) to the Fairness Doctrine (1949) and to the contemporary Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Open Internet principle, net neutrality. These debates demonstrate how media policy discourse has shaped democratic ideals, including by designating whose voices are or are not included in broadcast and digital communication spaces. The discourse emerging from both media policy debates reveals that fears concerning cultural hegemony and the diversity of expression in the United States have intertwined with fears concerning the invasion of foreign ideologies. The article then considers the possibility of reconciling religious and secular discourse in the mediated public sphere.

The Practices of the Enlightenment: Aesthetics, Authorship, and the Public by Dorothea von Mücke

Reviewed by: The Practices of the Enlightenment: Aesthetics, Authorship, and the Public by Dorothea von Mücke Peter Erickson Dorothea von Mücke. The Practices of the Enlightenment: Aesthetics, Authorship, and the Public. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. 292 pp. In this ambitious new monograph, Dorothea von Mücke argues that Enlightenment ideas about authorship and the public sphere were profoundly shaped by both religious thought and the natural sciences. Her volume thus seeks to trace their evolution within a broader network of intellectual and cultural influences. "The discourse of philosophy alone," she argues, "does not suffice to understand the trajectory of these concepts." Von Mücke is interested in [End Page 327] describing the kind of "cultural work" through which an autonomous domain of aesthetic perception and creativity was developed and populated by its own newly stylized audiences, critics, and practitioners (123–24)—a domain that, in turn, shaped the Enlightenment more broadly. For this, von Mücke understands the Enlightenment not so much as an array of concepts, but as a set of habituated practices: of contemplation, aesthetic appreciation, and public deliberation. The goal of her volume is to reveal "where such practices [were] articulated, maintained, and promoted" (xiv). She works to trace how practices of observation, confession, and public debate migrated between different discursive contexts and took on new meaning. One is struck, on the one hand, by how highly portable and adaptable such practices could be—the way that they could be transplanted, repurposed, and transformed in different contexts. On the other hand, in von Mücke's view, these practices retain a trace of their origin. They are often borrowed precisely for their aura (72). If practices of confession, for example, were secularized through this process of migration, they served at the same time to provide secular discourses with new meaning and with greater stature (123). This shift of habituated practices from one context to another could, von Mücke notes, even come about unintentionally, almost in spite of itself. Von Mücke cites the work of Martin Gierl, who has shown that theological debates around the beginning of the eighteenth century helped to establish a set of secular norms of public deliberation and fairness—a set of neutral criteria according to which one might evaluate doctrinal claims (xxiv). In Part I of her book, von Mücke focuses on how practices of contemplation, developed through both spiritual exercises and the natural sciences, provided the basis for a new conception of aesthetics centered around the idea of a disinterested observer. This section includes an especially inspired reading of the use of naturalist emblems in seventeenth century editions of Johann Arndt's influential True Christianity. In Part II, von Mücke turns to the connection between religious practices of confession and the secular genre of autobiography, primarily through readings of Rousseau's Confessions of a Savoyard Vicar and Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit. She argues against a direct lineage between conversion narrative and autobiographical memoir, instead focusing on the ways that, across these different discourses, authors developed strategies to justify their perspective and assert their subjectivity. It was ultimately, in her view, not the sense of "confession" as an account of one's conversion but rather the sense of confession as a profession of faith or a statement of one's convictions that had the greater influence on the Enlightenment. In Part III, she works to contextualize Kant's famous essay on the Enlightenment within other discussions of the public sphere in the eighteenth century, including debates about patriotism in the midst of the Seven Years' War. In being willing to consider religious influences on secular Enlightenment thought, von Mücke sees her study as an intervention into a field of Enlightenment research still dominated in North America by the militantly anti-religious French philosophes (xviii). It would have been interesting, in the context of considering the role of religious "practices" in the evolution of Enlightenment thought, for von Mücke to include a discussion of the concept of "spiritual exercises," as it was developed in the work of Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault. This would have offered an especially robust conceptual understanding of the...

“Next Unto the Gods My Life Shall Be Spent in Contemplation of Him”: Margaret Cavendish’s Dramatised Widowhood in Bell in Campo (I&II)

Abstract Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) is nowadays remembered as one of the most outspoken female writers and playwrights of the mid-seventeenth-century; one who openly promoted women’s right to education and public displays of creativity. Thus she paved the way for other female artists, such as her near contemporary, Aphra Behn. Although in her times seen as a harmless curiosity rather than a paragon to emulate, Cavendish managed to publish her plays along with more philosophical texts. Thanks to the re-discovery of female artists by feminist revisionism, her drama is now treated as a valuable source of knowledge on the values and norms of her class, gender, and, more generally, English society in the seventeenth century. Cavendish’s two-partite play Bell in Campo (1662) is a fantasy on the world where women can fight united not only against misogyny but also against an actual enemy. While the two plays seem to be focused on the valiant Lady Victoria and her female “Noble Heroicks”, Bell in Campo likewise offers an odd subplot featuring two widows and their lives without their beloved husbands. In the secular discourse of the seventeenth century, widowhood has been seen as either liberating – as when the woman became the sole owner of her husband’s estate and goods, or regained her own, and thus more independent – or degrading – when she became the not-so-welcomed burden on her children’s shoulders and pockets. Other studies on widowhood likewise state its symbolic function, showing women as the bearers of memory, predominantly of the husband and his virtues, and often attending to the spouse’s site of memory. While discussing the cultural history of properly performed widowhood, seen as the final (st)age of a woman’s life, and taking into account Cavendish’s remarkable biography, the present paper offers a close study of her propositions for appropriate widowhood and its positioning in contrast to other states of womankind as presented in Bell in Campo.1 It will likewise take into account the more or less sublimated evidence for gerontophobia, particularly in relation to women, as shown in Cavendish’s play and seventeenth-century culture.

The impact of gay friendly cultures on religious expression: a study of inclusive attitudes and behaviours among religious adolescent American male athletes

This article investigates the way attitudes inclusive of homosexuality have proliferated among 11 high school athletes on 1 sporting team, despite those athletes representing various beliefs. Utilizing an in-depth, six-question interview schedule, as well as Huber’s centrality of religion scale (CRS-10), the respondents’ varied religious backgrounds, attitudes towards homosexuality and religiosity are discerned via semi-structured interviews. Results show that these young men reconcile their church’s stances with their own inclusive beliefs, reported ostensibly inclusive environments within their church communities, and articulated their belief in equality through secular discourse. As church communities in inclusive locales deemphasize anti-gay principles and posture inclusivity, young people may maintain religious identities as a function of secularization as declining religious authority. Finally, I discuss the relationship between inclusive masculinities, religiosity and secularization; in doing so, I explore mechanisms by which dominant cultural narratives (in this case, the acceptance of homosexuality) might transform religious expression and religious institutions.

Religion, Mediatization, and ‘Complementary Learning Processes’ in Swedish Editorials

This article analyzes positions and arguments in editorials from Swedish newspapers during the period of 1976–2010 regarding the place of religion in modern, democratic society. Starting from Habermas’ call for changes in European political discourse in a post-secular situation, the article analyzes whether signs of ‘complementary learning processes’ can be found in the editorials, where alternatives to a secularist understanding of religion are expressed. Findings suggest that mediatization through increased politicization of the daily press contributes to a re-articulation of the former secularist discourse in Swedish editorials. A salient theme in this alternative discourse is the tension between religious freedom and other citizen rights.

Jewish Theology in Germany: The co-Existence of Secular and Religious Discourse

How often do secular and religious discourses communicate and interrelate at points where they intersect in society? When the Science of Judaism (Wissenschaft des Judentums) evolved at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it intended, through both theological and secular studies, to demonstrate the general value of Jewish culture and civilization. Although denied a place in the public university system until after the Shoah, Jewish Studies departments have since been established at various German universities, and, in 2013, the School of Jewish Theology of the University of Potsdam was opened as the first Jewish divinity school in the history of the German university system. With this, what was once a utopian dream became a reality, and both branches of the Science of Judaism, religious and secular, became undisputed parts of the German academic scene, using similar tools for differing aims. Two prime examples of the intersection of the secular and religious in Germany today are the proliferation of divinity schools at state universities, on the one hand, and the development of military chaplaincy in the armed forces, on the other. Both of these, through contractual agreements, aim to regulate and facilitate religious pluralism within a secular state. While the one has already begun to take place, the other is currently under discussion.

The Islamic Secular

Professor Sherman Jackson’s essay “The Islamic Secular” challenges the popularconception within the Muslim community that norms are either “Islamic”or “un-Islamic.” Insofar as popular Muslim consciousness accords legitimacyonly to the “Islamic” and grants only grudging, if any, legitimacy to the “non-Islamic,” this intervention is welcome and profoundly needed. But his ambitionhere goes beyond correcting misconceptions within the community itself:It is also an intervention in debates about the secular, secularization, and religionin western academic discourses. In the brief space allotted to me to respondto this very rich and important essay, I will limit myself to the argumentshe directs toward the terms mentioned above and his argument that the “Islamic”secular presents a different phenomenon ...

La contienda por los contenidos de educación sexual: repertorios discursivos y políticos utilizados por actores en México a inicios del siglo XXI

In 2006, there was a fight to modify the content of middle school sex education in Mexico. To understand this struggle for secular education, we conducted interviews and reviewed public statements by different actors, documenting the use of discursive repertoires to argue their proposals and the link with businessmen and public officials. The struggle shows how the secular state is constructed through actors’ strategies and reflects the legitimacy of both religious and secular discourse. The secularism of sex education advanced because the secular state is underpinned by a complex legal and political framework which scientific evidence and population, health, gender and human rights priorities regard as being more legitimate than religious values. However, the contents are permeated by Catholic discourse due to the use of power networks and concerns over the loss of sexual order.

Der Pragmatismus zwischen Naturalismus und Experientalismus

Abstract Comparing Hans Joas’s book (Die Sakralität der Person, Berlin 2011) with its critique by Anton Leist (“Kann personale Heiligkeit Menschenrechte fördern?”, in this journal), I differentiate different fields of combat. The mainstream of Leist’s criticism is, I think, misdirected. Leist accuses Joas of ‘Christianising’ human rights, which alleges a binary logic (either religious or secular justifications of human rights) that does not do justice to Joas’s approach. For Joas, human rights are something in their own right which emerged from secular and religious discourse and hence cannot be reduced to either of them. I criticize Leist’s effort to draft a new justification of human rights in terms of interests and the counter-intuitive and revisionary consequences of this. Here, Joas’s ‘experientalism’ is to be preferred, because it remains loyal to human rights (that is the point of “affirmative genealogy”). I agree with Leist’s claim, however, that Joas could have made a much stronger case for the secular version of his argument, perhaps by using other authors. As it stands now, Joas’s book can be (mis)read as an effort to re-Christianise human rights. (This would no longer be affirmative, but revisionary as well.) The idea of an „affirmative genealogy“ is an ingenious methodological innovation that allows the combination of normative philosophy with sociological contextualisation (this latter usually has a rather destructive effect on ‘meaning‘). Yet the question remains whether a contextualisation of peoples experiences and emotions, which leads them to believing in certain norms, can also be read as a philosophical justification of these norms.

Nathanael West, Secularism, and the Uses of Comedy

This essay is an attempt to understand the elusive metaphysical and ethical meanings of the comic in Nathanael West, and in doing so to chart the possible relations between secularism and comedy. West described his fiction as “moral satire,” yet he is also a comedian of cultural “discourse,” and the normative discourses necessary to the moral energies of satire are travestied in his work. I argue that to elucidate this paradox we must read West as an ironist of irony and a satirist of satire; West is an unrelenting comic novelist who nonetheless thematizes the existential uses of comedy and accentuates their dangers and limits. I show how this tension unfolds with regard to secularism and religion, particularly in Miss Lonelyhearts: West’s comic deflations of religious aspiration seem aligned with a vehement secular materialism, yet West brings his irony to bear on the discourse of secularism itself, and the characters that understand themselves as masterful comic agents must do penance as comic objects.

From Sentiment to Security: Cugoano, Liberal Principles, and the Bonds of Empire

From Sentiment to Security: Cugoano, Liberal Principles, and the Bonds of Empire Jeffrey Hole (bio) And as we hear tell of the kings of Europe having abolished, the infernal invention of the bloody tribunal of the inquisition, and the Emperor and others making some grand reformations for the happiness and good of their subjects; it is to be hoped also that these exalted and liberal principles will lead them on to greater improvements in the civilization and felicitation, and next to abolish that other diabolical invention of the bloody and cruel African slave-trade, and the West-Indian slavery. Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments (1787)1 The problems of what I shall call the economy of power peculiar to liberalism are internally sustained, as it were, by this interplay of freedom and security. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics (1979)2 Along with transatlantic authors Phillis Wheatley, Ignatius Sancho, Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, and Olaudah Equiano, as well as figures from the metropolitan center—John Wesley, Thomas Clarkson, James Ramsey, and Granville Sharp, among others—the Fante-born and former West Indian slave Quobna Ottobah Cugoano (baptized as John Stuart) intervened in Britain’s volatile debate over modern slavery and contributed to the emerging energies of late eighteenth-century abolitionism with Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, a work “humbly submitted to the inhabitants of Great Britain.” In 1791, he would publish the abbreviated, if not slightly altered, version “Addressed to the Sons of Africa by a Native.”3 Thoughts and Sentiments likens the transatlantic trafficking of humans to [End Page 175] “piracy” and “theft” and unequivocally calls for the total abolishment of slavery and the universal emancipation of slaves held in bondage. Making use of both religious and secular discourse, Cugoano’s style of polemic exhibits prophetic jeremiad and biblical exegesis, contributes to natural rights philosophy and eighteenth-century climatology, comments on British jurisprudence and property law, and theorizes important transformations in colonial economics and the role British Empire has played in global commerce. With multiple gestures towards and invocations of “liberal principles”4—including the example cited in the epigraph of this essay—Cugoano entreats the British to redirect the efforts of its military power and use its naval dominance in the Atlantic to establish the conditions necessary for legitimate commerce and to enforce the abolition of the slave trade: “I would propose, that a fleet of some ships of war should be immediately sent to the coast of Africa, and particularly where the slave trade is carried on[,] . . . to intercept all ships that were bring[ing] [slaves] away” (100). Cugoano’s work has received far less consideration than Equiano’s Interesting Narrative (1789) and other late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave writing, and even less attention has been paid to the specific ways in which Cugoano’s argument for the abolition of slavery occasions important theoretical questions regarding the emergence and development of liberalism.5 Jeffrey Gunn has recently suggested that the “lack of scholarship” is because there is “very little information documenting Cugoano’s life.”6 Indeed, the challenge for those addressing Thoughts and Sentiments is that it pushes against established boundaries of genre and resists being reduced to matters of biography or a narrative about identity; moreover, it advances important, even difficult, questions for scholars whose work examines the relays between literature and philosophy within the intersecting field formations of legal, political, and economic theory. How, for instance, does Thoughts and Sentiments implicitly or explicitly theorize political change, and what forms of power are constitutive of change? How is abolitionism and emancipatory political discourse linked to, enabled, or even restricted by emerging ideas and practices of sentimentalism, liberalism, cosmopolitanism, and forms of global purview, including European and British imperialism? How does Cugoano draw on and imagine, moreover, the history and changing role of the British Empire (as an order of cultural and even military power) within late eighteenth-century global political–economic dynamics? Intervening in a growing, yet limited, body of scholarship on Cugoano, which I outline a bit later, and drawing on disciplines linking the study of liberalism, slavery, and political theory, this...

The Greatest Metaphor Ever Mixed: Gold in the British Bible, 1750-1850.

Given the frequency of negative references to gold in British allusions to filthy lucre, it emerges as an historical puzzle that Britons resorted to biblical metaphors of gold so often in describing heaven and their aspiration to be purified in God's crucible. This article provides evidence for the prominence of these two metaphors in British religious and secular discourse between 1750 and 1850, and argues that Britons tried to resolve the resulting tensions by celebrating their uniquely abstract valuation of gold, in contrast to less "civilized" connotations of gold in Catholic and non-Christian cultures.

English

This qualitative research is a critical discourse analysis of the representation of Yemen crisis in ideologically-inclined newspaper headlines of Iran, Arab and the West. A total of 63 headlines were selected from as the corpus of this study. The newspapers included Iran Daily, Tehran Times, Iran on-line and IRNA (Islamic republic news agency) from Iranian; Al-sharq Alwsat and Al-Jazeera from Arab; and finally Telegraph, USA Today, News Week, and New York Time from among the Western newspapers. The three dimensional model of Norman Fairclough was employed to explore the specific themes conveyed through the representation of participants and processes about Yemen crisis. The findings showed that the Houthis are introduced as rebels by both Arab and Western newspapers, and that Saudi Arabia plays a protective role against rebels. On the other end, Iran, along with representing Saudis and the westerns as intruders, chooses and promotes a diplomatic way by condemning the military measures and inviting the parties to come up with a diplomatic solution. Meanwhile, the West supports Saudi-led coalition and legitimates Saudi’s attack by proving that the Houthis are Rebels. As for the source of such opposing discourses, it is argued that the opposing ideological views of Islam in the Middle East and the discourse of Secularism in the West lead to contradictory discourses in the region. DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/gema-2016-1603-03