Piety, Power, and Politics
Piety, Power, and Politics

Author: Douglas Sullivan-González

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre

Published: 2014-01-29

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 0822970503

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Douglass Sullivan Gonzalez examines the influence of religion on the development of nationalism in Guatemala during the period 1821-1871, focusing on the relationship between Rafael Carrera amd the Guatemalan Catholic Church. He illustrates the peculiar and fascinating blend of religious fervor, popular power, and caudillo politics that inspired a multiethnic and multiclass alliance to defend the Guatemalan nation in the mid-nineteenth century.Led by the military strongman Rafael Carrera, an unlikely coalition of mestizos, Indians, and creoles (whites born in the Americas) overcame a devastating civil war in the late 1840s and withstood two threats (1851 and 1863) from neighboring Honduras and El Salvador that aimed at reintegrating conservative Guatemala into a liberal federation of Central American nations.Sullivan-Gonzalez shows that religious discourse and ritual were crucial to the successful construction and defense of independent Guatemala. Sermons commemorating independence from Spain developed a covenantal theology that affirmed divine protection if the Guatemalan people embraced Catholicism. Sullivan-Gonzalez examines the extent to which this religious and nationalist discourse was popularly appropriated.Recently opened archives of the Guatemalan Catholic Church revealed that the largely mestizo population of the central and eastern highlands responded favorably to the church's message. Records indicate that Carrera depended upon the clerics' ability to pacify the rebellious inhabitants during Guatemala's civil war (1847-1851) and to rally them to Guatemala's defense against foreign invaders. Though hostile to whites and mestizos, the majority indigenous population of the western highlands identified with Carrera as their liberator. Their admiration for and loyalty to Carrera allowed them a territory that far exceeded their own social space.Though populist and antidemocratic, the historic legacy of the Carrera years is the Guatemalan nation. Sullivan-Gonzalez details how theological discourse, popular claims emerging from mestizo and Indian communities, and the caudillo's ability to finesse his enemies enabled Carrera to bring together divergent and contradictory interests to bind many nations into one.

The Pious Sex
The Pious Sex

Author: Andrea Radasanu

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2012-07-10

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0739131060

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The Pious Sex strives to enlighten the reader with respect to the relationship between women and religion. The notion that there is a special relationship between women and piety may call to mind the worst of the prejudices associated with women over the ages: the characterization of women as superstitious and inherently irrational creatures who must be kept firmly in hand by the patriarchal establishment. The suggestion that there is a special relationship between women and piety conjures up the most oppressive picture of womanly virtue. The contributors of this volume revisit the claim that women constitute the pious sex and investigate the implications of such a designation. This collection of original essays examines the relationship between women and religion in the history of political thought broadly conceived. This theme is a remarkably revealing lens through which to view the Western philosophical and poetical traditions that have culminated in secular and egalitarian modern society. The essays also give highly analytical accounts of the manifold and intricate relationships between religion, family, and public life in the history of political thought, and the various ways in which these relationships have manifested themselves in pagan, Jewish, Christian, and post-Christian settings.

Civil Religion in Modern Political Philosophy
Civil Religion in Modern Political Philosophy

Author: Steven Frankel

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2020-07-15

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 0271087439

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Inspired by Machiavelli, modern philosophers held that the tension between the goals of biblical piety and the goals of political life needed to be resolved in favor of the political, and they attempted to recast and delimit traditional Christian teaching to serve and stabilize political life accordingly. This volume examines the arguments of those thinkers who worked to remake Christianity into a civil religion in the early modern and modern periods. Beginning with Machiavelli and continuing through to Alexis de Tocqueville, the essays in this collection explain in detail the ways in which these philosophers used religious and secular writing to build a civil religion in the West. Early chapters examine topics such as Machiavelli’s comparisons of Christianity with Roman religion, Francis Bacon’s cherry-picking of Christian doctrines in the service of scientific innovation, and Spinoza’s attempt to replace long-held superstitions with newer, “progressive” ones. Other essays probe the scripture-based, anti-Christian argument that religion must be subordinate to politics espoused by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and David Hume, both of whom championed reason over divine authority. Crucially, the book also includes a study of civil religion in America, with chapters on John Locke, Montesquieu, and the American Founders illuminating the relationships among religious and civil history, acts, and authority. The last chapter is an examination of Tocqueville’s account of civil religion and the American regime. Detailed, thought-provoking, and based on the careful study of original texts, this survey of religion and politics in the West will appeal to scholars in the history of political philosophy, political theory, and American political thought.

Dependence and Freedom
Dependence and Freedom

Author: David Wayne Haddorff

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 9780819194848

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This book argues that Horace Bushnell (1802-1876) rejected the prevalent utilitarian moral philosophy of his day and developed an alternative moral theory based upon Christian theology and experience. Bushnell claimed that human nature is inherently social, moral experience is interrelated with estrangement and restoration, and Christian piety is a transforming power in the world. Contents: Preface; Introduction: Bushnell as a Moral Theologian; In Search of a Moral Philosophy: Bushnell and New England Moral Thought in Tradition; From Moral Philosophy to Christian Ethics: Bushnell's Moral Thought Before 1847; Moral Development and the Human Condition; The Moral Restoration of Human Character and Ethical Freedom; Ethics in Tension: Bushnell's Political and Social Thought; Christ Transforming Culture: Providential Progress and the Moral Power of Religion; Bibliography; Index.

The Tillinghasts in America
The Tillinghasts in America

Author: Wayne G. Tillinghast

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 800

ISBN-13:

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Pardon Tillinghast, son of Pardon Tillinghast and Sarah Browne, was born in about 1622 in Severn Cliffs, Sussex, England. He married (Sarah?) Butterworth and they had three children. He married Lydia Taber and they had nine children. He died 29 January 1717/18 in Providence, Rhode Island. Descendants and relatives lived mainly in Rhode Island and New York.