Twentieth-century Christian Research Articles

The Barthian Revolt or the New Modernism: Karl Barth and the Limits of American Evangelical Theology

Throughout the twentieth century, U.S. American evangelicals engaged in an ongoing series of definitional debates over the contours and limits of a distinctly evangelical approach to theology. Developed as an explicit counter to theological liberalism—and often signaled by strict adherence to biblical inerrancy—American evangelical theology might conceivably have made common cause with Karl Barth, whose infamous rebellion against his liberal teachers became one of the founding events in the story of twentieth-century Christian theology. Despite Barth’s putative anti-liberalism, evangelical theologians never fully embraced Barthian theology, consistently vilifying it as un-evangelical and beyond the pale. In this essay, I recover the history of U.S. American evangelical theologians wrestling with Karl Barth and his legacy, highlighting how an enduring aversion to Barthianism became a key feature of evangelical theology.

Ethics by Dietrich von Hildebrand

Reviewed by: Ethics by Dietrich von Hildebrand Peter C. Meilaender Dietrich von Hildebrand, Ethics. Steubenville, OH: Hildebrand Press, 2020. 500 pp. It is unlikely that most readers of The Journal of Austrian Studies are well acquainted with the work of Dietrich von Hildebrand. This new edition of von Hildebrand's Ethics, last published in English 50 years ago, offers a welcome opportunity to remedy that. Von Hildebrand was an important twentieth-century Christian phenomenologist. A student of Edmund Husserl and Adolf Reinach and a friend of Max Scheler, von Hildebrand went on to teach philosophy at the University of Munich. One of the most dramatic episodes of his biography, however, is intimately linked to the city of Vienna. Von Hildebrand had been an early and consistent critic of Nazism. When Hitler came to power, therefore, he was compelled to flee, traveling initially to Vienna in 1933. For approximately the next five years, he edited an important anti-Nazi weekly review, Der christliche Ständestaat. (He also wrote a study of Engelbert Dollfuss.) Hitler came to regard him as one of his most important enemies and even ordered his execution. When Germany annexed Austria in [End Page 123] 1938, therefore, von Hildebrand once again had to flee. After several stops in Europe, he ultimately ended up in the United States, where he taught philosophy at Fordham University until his retirement. Among the projects that von Hildebrand—who made contributions in many areas of philosophy—was able to finish after settling in the United States was his Ethics, originally published in 1953, but on which he had already been working 20 years earlier, while in Vienna. In his introductory essay to the present edition, John F. Crosby, the country's leading interpreter and translator of von Hildebrand, describes the Ethics as "the central text in Hildebrand's philosophy as a whole and in his moral philosophy in particular." Von Hildebrand distinguishes among several basic varieties of goods that call for affirmative responses from us. One such category is the merely "subjectively satisfying," those things that appeal to us for various reasons but are not necessarily of great intrinsic importance. As I type this review, for instance, I am munching on a chocolate bar and sipping an espresso, both of them subjectively satisfying, but neither a source of significant moral value. Other things are "objective goods" for the person. The salad that I ate for lunch before the chocolate, for example, was objectively good for me (as well as being a source of subjective satisfaction). Food and shelter, exercise, education, friendship—all of these are objective goods for me and in that sense genuine sources of value. But not the highest source. The most fundamental category of good is that which is important "in itself," quite apart from any subjective satisfaction it might offer or even whether it supplies any objective good for me. Von Hildebrand refers to such goods as "values"—the most important concept in his ethical thought. While there are different types of value, such as intellectual or aesthetic value, the highest variety is moral value. Thus, an act of forgiveness or charity, even one that bears no relation to me personally, possesses a depth of objective value demanding an affirmative response. Only when I recognize and respond to the call of these values is my soul properly attuned to the ontological structure of the universe. Indeed, the great nobility of the human soul is revealed precisely in its ability to transcend both what is subjectively satisfying and even what is objectively good for us and instead to affirm that which is truly valuable in and of itself. Hildebrand's philosophy of value allows him to give a rich account of the moral life, in ways too detailed and subtle than can be done justice in a brief review. He offers a detailed phenomenological analysis of a wide range [End Page 124] of moral attitudes and behaviors. In a pair of late chapters, for example, he provides a remarkably deft synopsis of the various forms of concupiscence and pride, which he identifies as the two sources of moral "disvalue." I defy anyone to read these without repeated twinges of guilty...

Wonderful Works of Nature: C.S. Lewis and Reijer Hooykaas on Francis Bacon and the Scientific Revolution

This article examines a disagreement which briefly came to light decades ago, half-posthumously, between two twentieth-century Christian scholars, C.S. Lewis (1898–1963) and Reijer Hooykaas (1906–1994), the first Dutch professor in the history of science, who later succeeded to the chair of Eduard Dijksterhuis in Utrecht. Hooykaas and Lewis diverge in their views of the role traditionally ascribed to the work of Francis Bacon (1561–1626) as a major inspiration for the seventeenth-century scientific revolution. Put briefly, while Bacon is a hero for Hooykaas, he is an antihero for Lewis. Sorting out the extent to which either scholar was right not only results in a fairly clear answer but entails, as a bonus, a fine example of what the history of science as an academic discipline is indeed good for.

The Christian Response to Religious Plurality: An appraisal of the Twentieth Century Christian Pluralist Approaches

As the modern world is getting more diverse in its sociopolitical, economic and cultural aspects in a variety of ways, the concept of religious pluralism is gaining more traction than ever before. This study explores different responses to the religious diversity developed in Christianity by theologians. It also aims to critically analyze the discourses of the Christian pluralistic approaches as the discussion on religious pluralism began in, and is still dominated by, the Christian tradition. The current study employs a qualitative methodology and content analysis approach has been used to collect and analyze the data. The research has concluded there are three basic responses to religious plurality in Christianity: “Exclusivism”, “Inclusivism” and “Religious Pluralism”. The findings also reveal that Christian pluralists embrace that religious pluralism in its general meaning recognizes the diversity of religious beliefs and systems co-existing in the society. Though there are some inadequacies in their approach, yet the pluralists consider it as a positive phenomenon and acknowledge that there are many ways to salvation in order to accept the religious other as they plead for interreligious dialogue to mitigate the religious conflicts for the sake of peaceful co-existence.

Educational Gender Inequality in Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Long‐Term Perspective

AbstractTo what extent did sub‐Saharan Africa's twentieth century schooling revolution benefit boys and girls equally? Using census data and a cohort approach, we examine gender gaps in years of education over the twentieth century at world region, country and district levels. First, we find that compared to other developing regions, Africa had a small initial educational gender gap but subsequently made the least progress in closing the gap. Second, in most of the 21 African countries studied, gender gaps increased during most of the colonial era (ca. 1880–1960) and declined, albeit at different rates, after independence. At the world region and country level, the expansion of men's education was initially associated with a growing gender gap, and subsequently a decline, a pattern we refer to as “educational gender Kuznets curve.” Third, using data from six decadal cohorts across 1,177 birth districts, we explore subnational correlates of educational gender inequality. This confirms the inverse‐U relationship between the gender gap and male education. We also find that districts with railroads, more urbanization and early twentieth century Christian missions witnessed lower attainment gaps. We find no evidence that cash crop cultivation, agricultural division of labor or family systems were linked to gender gaps.

Political Ressourcement: Decolonizing through Retrieval in African Political Theologies

ABSTRACT Political ressourcement is a strategy for decolonizing political imaginations by drawing on means of human organization that predate European colonialism. One such resource in this regard is the millennia-old tradition of compositional politics in sub-Saharan Africa. The compositional tradition’s insights for contemporary political theology are twofold. First, basing a community’s identity upon amalgamation rather than exclusion offers a powerful means of building lasting political association. Second, such amalgamation has become a proven way of challenging colonial politics’ exclusivist understandings of tribal, ethnic, and racial identities. In commending this tradition as a means of political ressourcement, the essay draws from Paul Landau’s historical research of the South African highveld. It engages a wider conversation in African studies on the compositional tradition, then shows how this tradition has proven a vibrant strategy for decolonial action for twentieth and twenty-first century Christian churches.

Portrait of a Twentieth-century Chinese Christian in Shandong

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the role of Wang Juntang, a prominent figure in the Baptist church in Shandong province before, during, and after World War Two. Discussion of his role exemplifies some of the relationships between the Baptist missionaries and their Chinese colleagues. It also illustrates how a prominent Chinese Christian could be viewed somewhat differently by foreign missionaries and by successive Chinese administrations. This in turn raises questions about the reliability of historic records, about the importance of different perspectives, and about how far historic records are open to re-interpretation.

“Like the Heathen”: Liminality, Ritual, and Religious Authority in Summer

Abstract Early twentieth-century Christianity is typically seen as backdrop, rather than foreground, in Wharton's work. Yet the 2016 American Literature Association panel on Wharton and religion, of which this article was originally a part, demonstrated the need to move religion from backdrop to foreground, especially, perhaps, with Wharton's New England fiction. My reading of Summer suggests that Wharton assessed the culture of Christianity around her in the rural New England of the era more carefully than has been previously supposed. The author's careful distribution of religious imagery and rhetoric at strategic points in the novel works to mark Charity's defiance and to resolve her liminality. In Summer, figures of religious authority mediate Charity's transition from the Mountain to North Dormer, from North Dormer to the Mountain, and back again.

“The dragon is sin”: Spenser’s Book I as Evangelical Fantasy

The twentieth-century Christian fantasy writer Frank Peretti is less well known among Spenserians than J. R. R. Tolkien or C. S. Lewis, but Peretti’s 1995 novel The Oath has striking parallels with...

Civilizational Sickness and the Suspended Middle: R.G. Collingwood, Christopher Dawson, and Historical Judgment

Civilizational Sickness and the Suspended MiddleR.G. Collingwood, Christopher Dawson, and Historical Judgment Philip Irving Mitchell (bio) Either reality is the immediate flow of subjective life, in which case it is subjective and not objective, it is enjoyed and cannot be known, or else it is that which we know, in which case it is objective and not subjective, it is a world of real things outside the subjective life of our mind and outside each other. . . .but to accept either horn is to be committed to the fundamental error of conceiving the mind as a mere immediate flow of feelings and sensations, devoid of all reflection and self-knowledge. r. g. collingwood, the idea of history1 It is always a temptation to the historian to exaggerate the continuity of history, above all when the historian is the representative of a party or a cause. But the past does not exist for the sake of the present, it has its own ends and its own values. Its life is bound up with the life of unique individual personalities, which may seem to be mere fodder for the historical process but which are nevertheless spiritual ultimates. christopher dawson, the spirit of the oxford movement2 The two volumes of Oswald Spengler’s infamous The Decline of the West (1916, 1923), which traced eight high cultures through the cycle [End Page 85] of birth, development, fulfillment, decay, and death, were translated into English in 1926 and 1928. Two British historians of note who shared Christian faith, R. G. Collingwood (1889–1943) and Christopher Dawson (1889–1970), felt obligated to review Spengler when the first volume appeared in translation. Typically, a Christian theory of history is understood to be linear in movement, and twentieth-century Christian thinkers largely rejected views like Spengler’s. The two historians’ individual critiques also drew Dawson into an assessment of Collingwood that Dawson continued to hold for much of his career. Collingwood and Dawson agreed with Spengler that civilizational life and death were historical realities and that past cultures had ideological centers and even some predictable course; at the same time, both men shared a deep distrust of positivist claims for necessary causation. Likewise, they shared a concern for Christian civilization—even to a similar cultural diagnosis before and during World War II, yet when they arrived at their common alarm, it was with different assumptions about historical judgment. Their claims about the sickness of the West might seem to require something like Spengler’s tragic cycle, and yet both sought other ways to make this diagnosis than that of a positivist fatalism in which evolved animals rebel against an indifferent universe.3 Each historian sought an active and creative account of human potential within history. While Collingwood favored an interpretation of historical consciousness that looked toward the subjective, Dawson tended toward the externals and the objective. Their two centers of gravity in terms of theory and practice, not surprisingly, also favored differing accounts of Christian faith: Collingwood’s inclining toward immanence and Dawson’s toward transcendence. Nevertheless, each moved within what Erich Przywara has called a “suspended middle,” a measurement of existence both in and beyond history, that is, one that gives space mutually to universal truths and to historical particulars, and from within this suspension, both historians involved their historical judgments in moral ones, as well. [End Page 86] Realism and Idealism Collingwood and Dawson have been influential authors, yet, in his lifetime, neither was considered near the disciplinary center of academic history. The Anglican Collingwood, who taught at Pembroke College, Oxford, for fifteen years before becoming Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Magdalen College, Oxford, was somewhat isolated in his fields of study. Along with his archeological digs at Romano-British sites and his involvement in folklore studies, his chief focus was on the history of philosophy and in turn, the philosophy of history. The posthumous The Idea of Nature (1945) and The Idea of History (1946)—both mostly drafted in the late 1930s—were to become well-known books, the latter creating a conversation that continues until today. In his lifetime, however, other than the notoriety within certain academic circles of...

Revisiting ‘Translatability’ and African Christianity: The Case of the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion

Focusing on the ‘translatability’ of Christianity in Africa is now commonplace. This approach stresses that African Christian practice is thoroughly inculturated and relevant to local cultural concerns. However, in exclusively emphasizing Christianity's indigeneity, an opportunity is lost to understand how Africans entered into complex relationships with North Americans to shape a common field of religious practice. To better illuminate the transnational, open-faced nature of Christianity in Africa, this article discusses the history of a twentieth-century Christian faith healing movement called Zionism, a large black Protestant group in South Africa. Eschewing usual portrayals of Zionism as an indigenous Southern African movement, the article situates its origins in nineteenth-century industrializing, immigrant Chicago, and describes how Zionism was subsequently reimagined in a South African context of territorial dispossession and racial segregation. It moves away from isolated regional histories of Christianity to focus on how African Protestantism emerged as the product of lively transatlantic exchanges in the late modern period.

Book Review: Twentieth Century Christian Responses to Religious Pluralism: Difference is Everything. By David Pitman

Book Review: Twentieth Century Christian Responses to Religious Pluralism: Difference is Everything. By David Pitman

Hidden in Plain Sight: A Companion Reference to Threats, Real and Imagined, as Configured in Late Twentieth-Century Christian America

Hidden in Plain Sight: A Companion Reference to Threats, Real and Imagined, as Configured in Late Twentieth-Century Christian America Chauna Craig (bio) Ace in the Hole 1. The first Minuteman Missile—America’s first solid fuel, fully automated, push-button missile and John F. Kennedy’s secret weapon against the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis—was buried in Alpha Six silo, forty miles southeast of my hometown. It took only thirty-two seconds to launch. In 1962, when Khrushchev’s threats escalated, Air Command overrode the usual safety procedures requiring four separate approvals from two different command centers to release a missile. Only one command center was actually finished, and rules are always suspended in a crisis. See Great Falls, Montana, Malmstrom Air Force Base, and Minuteman Missile. 2. The unregistered junk gun my father bought from a junior-high guidance counselor “just in case” and hid in a box in our attic. See also Saturday Night Special. American Redoubt With origins in the military concept of “redoubt,” which means a safe or protected enclave, this describes the region in the American West recommended as a refuge for Christians in the coming end times. The American Redoubt consists of eastern Washington and Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, an ideal hideaway due to its sparse population, libertarian ideals, and landscape abundant with natural resources, like water and game. Proponents have observed, however, that Christians moving to the American Redoubt would be wise to remain west of missile bases, due to the probability of nuclear fallout. See also Malmstrom Air Force Base. American Doubt and Redoubt are awaiting apocalypse. Doubt is annihilated. Who is left? [End Page 5] Antichrist The opposite of Christ, and thus the opposite of sacrifice and salvation. An ungodly beast whose intention is to enslave us all, the Antichrist can take any form, including that of the Pope, Communist world leaders, and/or Democrats. My ex-husband liked to tell his children, my stepchildren, that he was 666 years old. We lived in the Bible Belt then, and the kids gleefully shared this detail with their classmates and teachers. When I suggested that claiming to be the Antichrist was no way to make friends, he said I never could take a joke. My own children recently told me that their father claims to be 666 years old. I see no reason to argue. See Armageddon and Revelation (Book of). Armageddon The final battle between good and evil, for which the signs and indicators are abundant if you know where to look. All of my childhood was an education in where to look. See Eschatology. Cabin in the Middle of Nowhere Before I was born, my grandfather bought a primitive log cabin in a canyon in the middle of Meagher County, Montana. Single room, sleeping porch, outhouse. It was the summer weekend escape of my childhood. Over the years, he added a well and a root cellar “just in case.” The only thing I remember anyone keeping in that root cellar was a six-pack of bottled Coca-Cola in 1985 when rumors of a new formula felt like the end of the world. See Armageddon, Iodine-131 and Y2K. See also Kaczynski, Theodore. The Day After (1983) A made-for-television movie dramatizing the effects of nuclear war on a town in Kansas and starring Jason Robards and John Lithgow. ABC drew a record 100 million viewers, and the horror of this imagined event was so potentially traumatizing that a free counseling hotline was available. Lawrence, Kansas, was chosen as the setting for The Day After because the 150 Minuteman missiles nearby made the town a “realistic” target. My mother comforted us with this thought: we lived near more missiles than that and would never suffer radiation sickness. We would be annihilated. [End Page 6] Eschatology The study of end times and all the signs and wonders surrounding them. Freemen, Montana On a ranch in southeastern Montana, more properly known as the Middle of Nowhere, a group of people calling themselves “Freemen” gained national attention when one of their leaders declared in the spring of 1995 a holy war of God’s laws versus man’s...

Lit-sen Chang (1904–1996) and the Critique of Indigenous Theology

This article introduces one of the works of an influential, twentieth-century Chinese theologian and Christian apologist, Lit-sen Chang. The book discussed, Critique of Indigenous Theology, was Chang’s attempt to safeguard Chinese theology against uncritical indigenisation, a risk he saw reflected in different ways among some of his theological contemporaries. Locating the issue of indigenisation within a biblical and historical-theological framework, Chang’s feisty prose raises important issues for contemporary discussion of ‘Sino-Christian Theology’. As an example of acute Chinese reflection on ways in which a Reformed or evangelical faith can be thoughtfully appropriated by Chinese Christians, Chang’s scholarship is an important resource for global engagement with issues of indigenisation and contextualisation today.

God’s Agents: Biblical Publicity in Contemporary England by Matthew Engelke (review)

Matthew Engelke, God's Agents: Biblical Publicity in Contemporary England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. 320 pp.For secular citizens of contemporary industrialized nations, it is difficult to think of missionaries as anything other than agents of coercion. While methods may vary over time and across religious traditions, the common thread running through histories from a secular perspective is that missionaries attempt to transform people through the promulgation of specific religious beliefs and practices. What makes this a necessarily coercive project from this point of view is the fact that religion is largely understood to stand outside of the sphere of rationality. For secular citizens, the main-perhaps the only-legitimate form of non-coercive evangelism (it is hard to find terms not borrowed from a religious vocabulary) is through rational, critical debate. If religion is about beliefs, ones that are not provable in a scientistic register, then missionization is a project of illegitimately forcing people to change.Unlike souls, minds and opinions can be changed through discussion or through targeted acts of information dispersal. The political activism of the Facebook era is largely predicated on a much older model of consciousness raising: people only think the way they do because they do not know the real state of things. Let them know about the true costs of fossil fuel consumption (insert your own pet project here) through catchy posts on social media, and they will start to these posts, share them, and maybe even call their elected representatives.But secularists are not the only ones concerned with the coercive nature of missionizing. Missionaries also worry about rice Christians, those who participate in activities only to take advantage of economic benefits; or syncretism, a state of religious mixture that, from a perspective, is due to a poor understanding of the path to salvation. Twentieth century Christian missiology was largely focused on trying to eradicate coercion from practices. In the American evangelical cases with which I am most familiar, this reformist agenda was captioned as a critique of the mainline missions that coerced potential converts into being Western rather than being authentic, free, and local Christians. While the groups and organizations involved in this reformist agenda were varied, they all shared a dedication to missionization that avoided institutions- schools, stations, rules of conduct, or dress-and advocated the capacities for freedom found in linguistic debate, especially debate centered on the Bible (Handman n.d.).Bible translation, then, became the premier form of non-coercive missionization. To only slightly caricature this position, the missiological method was: go, translate, leave, and let the Holy Spirit do the rest. The Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL, International) is a global linguistics and literacy NGO whose roughly 4,500 members are largely focused on translating the New Testament into hundreds of languages around the world. Translators spend about 15 years in a given locale translating scriptures into the native language of local people so that they can easily and accurately receive Christianity's revelations. In its members' own estimation, SIL is not a church planting organization-in fact it avoids the term mission all together-but is instead a global network of people engaged in the spread of important information, just like those environmentalist advocates whose posts populate my Facebook feed.SIL (and many other Christian groups more willing to take on the missionary name) have long had a partner in these efforts in the British and Foreign Bible Society, founded in London in 1804, and the subject of Matthew Engelke's excellent God's Agents: Biblical Publicity in Contemporary England. The goal of the Bible Society was to provide the scriptures to every person in the world, ideally in a speaker's native language (2). …

The Paths of Christian Legal Scholarship

The history of twentieth century Christian legal scholarship - really, the absence of Christian legal scholarship in America's elite law schools - can be told as a tale of two emblematic clashes: the first an intriguing historical footnote, the second a brief, explosive war of words. In the first, a tort action in Nebraska circa 1890,William Jennings Bryan and Roscoe Pound served as opposing counsel; the second was a war of words in the 1940s between a group of neo-Thomist scholars and defenders of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Using these two incidents to frame as a starting point, this essay briefly chronicles the disappearance of Christian legal scholarship from the elite law reviews for much of the twentieth century. In the past few years, however, there have been signs of a possible renaissance. The second half of the essay focuses on the signs of renewal. To organize the discussion, I address three very basic questions: What?, Who?, and How? - What are the most promising directions for Christian legal scholarship? Who is a Christian legal scholar? And how can Christian legal scholarship best be facilitated?

Misers or lovers? How a reflection on Christian mysticism caused a shift in Jacques Lacan’s object theory

In his sixth seminar, Desire and Its Interpretation (1956–1957), Lacan patiently elaborates his theory of the ‘phantasm’ ($◊a), in which the object of desire (object small a) is ascribed a constitutive role in the architecture of the libidinal subject. In that seminar, Lacan shows his fascination for an aphorism of the twentieth century Christian mystic Simone Weil in her assertion: “to ascertain exactly what the miser whose treasure was stolen lost: thus we would learn much.” This is why, in his theory, Lacan conceptualizes the object of desire as the unconsumed treasure—and, in that sense, the “nothing”—on which the miser’s desire is focused. But the more Lacan develops his new object theory, the more he realizes how close it is to Christian mysticism in locating the ultimate object of desire in God, in a sevenfold “nothing” (to quote the famous last step in the ascent of the Mount Carmel as described by John of the Cross). An analysis of Shakespeare’s Hamlet allows Lacan to escape the Christian logic and to rearticulate the object of desire in an ‘unchristian’ tragic grammar. When he replaces the miser by the lover as paradigm of the subject’s relation to its object of desire, he substitutes a strictly Greek kind of love—eros, not agape—for the miser’s relationship to his treasure. Even when, in the late Lacan, “love” becomes a proper concept, its structure remains deeply “tragic.”

Harnack, Marcion – das Evangelium vom fremden Gott

As a student, Adolf [von] Harnack wrote a prize-winning thesis on Marcion, the influential preacher condemned by the church in Rome as a heretic in 144 CE. Basically a collection of sources and never printed, the work kept occupying Harnack until he finally published it half a century later, in 1920. It had become a monograph which not only offered a reconstruction of Marcion’s life and work, based on exhaustive source study, but also an interpretation of his importance. Harnack, having become one of the most important historians of Church and doctrine, brilliantly situated Marcion in a crucial phase of the history of the early Church. Joining in with the anti-Semitic spirit of the age, he also propagated Marcion’s radical rejection of the Old Testament as a recipe for healing twentieth-century Christianity.

The “Sticky Sediment” of Daily Life: Radical Domesticity, Revolutionary Christianity, and the Problem of Wealth in Britain from the 1880s to the 1930s

This essay examines an early twentieth-century Christian revolutionary habitus—a “technique of Christian living”—based on the conviction that everyday life was an essential site for reconciling the claims of individual and community, the material and the spiritual. The pacifist-feminist members of London’s first “people’s house,” Kingsley Hall, linked their vision of Jesus’s inclusive and unbounded love for humanity to their belief in the ethical imperative that all people take full moral responsibility for cleaning up their own dirt as part of their utopian program to bring social, economic, and political justice to the outcast in London, Britain, and its empire. In imagining what a reconstructed post-World War I Britain might become, Kingsley Hall’s cross-class band of workers used mundane practices to unmake and remake the late-Victorian and Edwardian philanthropic legacy they inherited.

Tagore's Advice: The Critical Fortune and Misfortune of the Goan Painter Angelo da Fonseca (1902–1967)

This essay argues that the building of Angelo da Fonseca's critical fortune as a Christian artist from the 1930s to the 1950s was simultaneously and necessarily the building of his later misfortune and oblivion as a modern artist. Angelo da Fonseca was characterised as a Catholic painter during the first half of the twentieth century after the advice to ‘paint churches’ purportedly given to him by Rabindranath Tagore (or perhaps his nephew, Abanindranath Tagore). At the time, there was a generalised movement for the creation of a new Christian art involving many artists from all over the world. They too have vanished from art history's printed memory. This was due to modernism's exclusion of Christianity as a subject, which made it impossible for historians and critics to deal with twentieth-century Christian art. This, it will be argued, eventually led to a further exclusion: Indian Christian art was seen as simultaneously un-modern and un-Indian and was, therefore, omitted from the process played by the arts in India's nation-building.