Revolutionary Change and Democratic Religion

Revolutionary Change and Democratic Religion

Author: Celucien L. Joseph

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2020-04-15

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1498224709

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In Revolutionary Change and Democratic Religion, Celucien Joseph provides a fresh and careful reexamination of Haiti’s intellectual history by focusing on the ideas and writings of five prominent thinkers and public intellectuals: Toussaint Louverture, Joseph Antenor Firmin, Jacques Roumain, Dantes Bellegarde, and Jean Price-Mars. The book articulates a twofold argument. First of all, Haiti has produced a strong intellectual tradition from the revolutionary era to the postcolonial present, and that Haitian thought is not homogeneous and monolithic. Joseph puts forth the idea that the general interweaving themes of rhetoric, the race concept, race vindication, universal emancipation, religious pluralism, secular humanism, the particular and the universal, and cosmopolitanism are representative of Haiti’s intellectual tradition. Secondly, the book also contends that Haitian intellectuals have produced a religious discourse in the twentieth century that could be phrased religious metissage. The religious ideas of these thinkers have been shaped by various forces, ideologies, religious traditions, and philosophical schools. In the same way, the religious experience of the Haitian people should be understood in terms of conflicting, heterodox, and pluralistic manifestations of religious piety, as the people in Haiti reacted to the crisis of slavery, Western colonialism and imperialism, and the arrogance of race in modernity in their striving to reposition themselves within the framework of universal and human metanarratives. The book departs from the dominant (contemporary) Vodou scholarship that is often characteristic of North American and Western studies on the religious life of the Haitian people and Haitian thinkers.


21st Century Revolution

21st Century Revolution

Author: Ted Glick

Publisher:

Published: 2021-07-15

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 9780970514318

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21st Century Revolution was written based upon the author's 53 years of continuous involvement in the movement for fundamental, justice grounded, political, social, economic and cultural change--revolution. He was driven to write it because of deep concern about the systemic threats to the possibility of a decent life for future generations, particularly the climate emergency and related environmental threats, the rise of a neo-fascist threat in the USA and elsewhere, and the widening gulf of economic/racial inequality. 21st Century Revolution was written to encourage those who consider themselves part of the movement for systemic change to consider a mix of issues and history that the author believes are essential to the prospect of eventual success in our collective revolutionary project. Glick's particular personal history, which includes not just decades of political activism and organizing but also in-and-out relationships with and study of religion and spirituality, has given him a vantage point which has been of value to others. 21sr Century Revolution does a number of things. It explores the issue of the relation between the socialist project since The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and organized religion, primarily Christianity. Within that context it addresses the questions, does God exist, and does it matter, as far as the historical project of fundamental social, political, cultural and economic change. It analyzes the major social, economic and cultural changes which began to take place approximately 10,000 years ago in Europe, Asia and North Africa as humans in those areas, after hundreds of thousands of years as hunter-gatherers, evolved into settled societies. This change led to an historic shift from men-and-women run, predominantly peaceful partnership societies to male-dominated, militaristic and class societies. It puts forward and explains the importance of a wide range of necessary cultural changes in present-day society, including within the political Left, if the human race is going to be able to avoid worldwide societal breakdown because of an intensifying climate crisis and ecological crisis. It describes what the author sees as seven distinct classes in U.S. society, as a contribution toward understanding the potentials, or lack of them, of each class to help make that revolution. It concludes with an articulation of and explanation in support of ten aspects of a winning strategy for revolutionary change in the 21st century which the author considers to be both necessary and already taking place.


Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800, Volume 1

Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800, Volume 1

Author: R. R. Palmer

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-08-10

Total Pages: 548

ISBN-13: 1400820111

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For the Western world as a whole, the period from about 1760 to 1800 was the great revolutionary era in which the outlines of the modern democratic state came into being. It is the thesis of this major work that the American, French, and Polish revolutions, and the movements for political change in Britain, Ireland, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, and other countries, though each distinctive in its own way, were all manifestations of recognizably similar political ideas, needs, and conflicts.


The Folly of Revolution

The Folly of Revolution

Author: S. Scott Rohrer

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2023-03-20

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0271094060

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In this penetrating biography of Thomas Bradbury Chandler, S. Scott Rohrer takes readers deep into the intellectual world of a leading loyalist who defended monarchy, rejected rebellion and democracy, and opposed the American Revolution. Talented, hardworking, and erudite, this Anglican minister from New Jersey possessed one of the Church of England’s most outstanding minds. Chandler was an Anglican leader in the 1760s and a key strategist in the effort to strengthen the American church in the years preceding the Revolution. He headed the campaign to create an Anglican bishopric in America—a cause that helped inflame tensions with American radicals unhappy with British policies. And, in the 1770s, his writings provided some of the most trenchant criticisms of the American revolutionary movement, raising fundamental questions about obedience, subordination, and rebellion that undercut Whig assertions about republicanism and popular control. Working from Chandler’s library catalog and other primary sources, Rohrer digs into Chandler’s political and religious beliefs, exploring their origins and the events in British history that shaped them. An intriguing and thoughtful reappraisal of a consequential figure in early American history, this biography will captivate students, scholars, and lay readers interested in politics and religion in Revolutionary-era America.


Democratic Religion

Democratic Religion

Author: Gregory A. Wills

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2003-03-13

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0195160991

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No American denomination identified itself more closely with the nation's democratic ideal than the Baptists. Most antebellum southern Baptist churches allowed women and slaves to vote on membership matters and preferred populists preachers who addressed their appeals to the common person. Paradoxically no denomination could wield religious authority as zealously as the Baptists. Between 1785 and 1860 they ritually excommunicated forty to fifty thousand church members in Georgia alone. Wills demonstrates how a denomination of freedom-loving individualists came to embrace an exclusivist spirituality--a spirituality that continues to shape Southern Baptist churches in contemporary conflicts between moderates who urge tolerance and conservatives who require belief in scriptural inerrancy. Wills's analysis advances our understanding of the interaction between democracy and religious authority, and will appeal to scholars of American religion, culture, and history, as well as to Baptist observers.


The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion

The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion

Author: Pooyan Tamimi Arab

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-09-01

Total Pages: 479

ISBN-13: 1351176226

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The Routledge Handbook of Material Religion places objects and bodies at the center of scholarly studies of religious life and practice. Propelling forward the study of material religion, the Handbook first reveals the deep philosophical roots of its key categories and then advances new critical analytics, such as queer materialities, inescapable material entanglements, and hyperobjects that explode the small-scale personal view on religions. The Handbook comprises thirty chapters, written by an international team of contributors who offer a global perspective of religious pasts and presents, divided into four thematic parts: Genealogies of Material Religion Materializing the Terms of the Study of Religion Entanglements, Entrapment, Escaping Hyperobjects, or How Ginormous Things Affect Religions In these four parts, the study of material religion is redirected towards systematic, critical interrogations of the imbrication of religious structures of power with racial, economic, political, and gendered forms of domination. From Spinoza’s political theology to African philosophies of ubuntu; from the queer materialities of Mesoamerican religion to the Satanic Temple of the United States; from Islamic love and sacrifice in human-animal entanglements to Shia militants’ attachment to weaponry; from epidemic cataclysm in Latin America to vast infrastructures and the gathering of millions in India’s Kumbh Mela, the study of material religion proves to be the study par excellence of the human condition. The Handbook is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies, anthropology, history, and media studies, and will also be of interest to those in related fields such as archeology, sociology, and philosophy.


Vodou and Christianity in Interreligious Dialogue

Vodou and Christianity in Interreligious Dialogue

Author: Celucien L. Joseph

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2023-10-30

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1666742414

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Vodou and Christianity in Interreligious Dialogue addresses both historical factors and ideological issues that created antagonism and conflict between Christians and Vodouists in Haiti. The book offers practical solutions and strategies to help create a harmonious and peaceful environment between religious practitioners associated with Vodou and Christianity. Toward this goal, this volume considers various perspectives and theories, such as autobiography, anthropology, ethnographic fieldwork, religious experience, and gender to examine the subject matter. This volume offers practical examples and resources on how to engage in interreligious dialogue and promote interreligious education in Haiti. There are three philosophical and practical ideas underlying this book project: (1) it is grounded on the belief that religion has value, and it could bring social goods to different communities and enhance human dignity and justice; (2) it is premised on the idea that dialogue and cooperation are necessary for nation-building and human development (as democratic ideals) and that one of the leading functions of the world’s religious traditions is to promote both cooperation and dialogue through mutual understanding and for the common good; and (3) that the power and public role of religion in society can be used as a major force of unification and peace-building among divergent factions and schools of thought, and to promote reconciliation, mutual respect, and friendship in the world.


Can We Zoom into God?

Can We Zoom into God?

Author: Andrew Hemingway

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2023-10-19

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1666744298

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When Zoom worship emerged in Britain during the COVID lockdown of 2020, Christians quickly turned to an art form, a form of theater, to deliver their worship. It was a quest for immanence, the very thing the Reformation dealt with by the elevation of transcendence. What an intriguing thought: Could John Calvin with his dictum regarding piety have practiced Zoom worship? Served as he was with the principle that the finite cannot contain the infinite, we must admit it looks very unlikely! At least in this Calvin saw eye-to-eye with Erasmus, but what of Luther? He may have been a comfortable Zoom worshiper, with his views that “Religious artworks are neither here nor there” and “We may have them or not as we please.” Little did the church realize that it would be a step back into the past, because “what you permit you promote.” The desire to use images was much more sinister than in Medieval times, as these were now images of ourselves! Regardless of the age, the image reigns supreme. What had caused the demise? Was it bereavement? It could not be bereavement of God; rather, it was the loss of the social, the bereavement of “one another.” The need for “one-anothering” had forced the hand of Christians to turn to a practice completely untested. Zoom worship was born—the genie is out, and will never go back in. But in the face of the now-acceptable force of contemporary narcissism, who cares?


The Will of the People

The Will of the People

Author: T. H. Breen

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-09-17

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0674242068

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“Important and lucidly written...The American Revolution involved not simply the wisdom of a few great men but the passions, fears, and religiosity of ordinary people.” —Gordon S. Wood In this boldly innovative work, T. H. Breen spotlights a crucial missing piece in the stories we tell about the American Revolution. From New Hampshire to Georgia, it was ordinary people who became the face of resistance. Without them the Revolution would have failed. They sustained the commitment to independence when victory seemed in doubt and chose law over vengeance when their communities teetered on the brink of anarchy. The Will of the People offers a vivid account of how, across the thirteen colonies, men and women negotiated the revolutionary experience, accepting huge personal sacrifice, setting up daring experiments in self-government, and going to extraordinary lengths to preserve the rule of law. After the war they avoided the violence and extremism that have compromised so many other revolutions since. A masterful storyteller, Breen recovers the forgotten history of our nation’s true founders. “The American Revolution was made not just on the battlefields or in the minds of intellectuals, Breen argues in this elegant and persuasive work. Communities of ordinary men and women—farmers, workers, and artisans who kept the revolutionary faith until victory was achieved—were essential to the effort.” —Annette Gordon-Reed “Breen traces the many ways in which exercising authority made local committees pragmatic...acting as a brake on the kind of violent excess into which revolutions so easily devolve.” —Wall Street Journal


Revolution

Revolution

Author: Saïd Amir Arjomand

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2019-04-29

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 0226026833

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A revolution is a discontinuity: one political order replaces another, typically through whatever violent means are available. Modern theories of revolutions tend neatly to bracket the French Revolution of 1789 with the fall of the Soviet Union two hundred years later, but contemporary global uprisings—with their truly multivalent causes and consequences—can overwhelm our ability to make sense of them. In this authoritative new book, Saïd Amir Arjomand reaches back to antiquity to propose a unified theory of revolution. Revolution illuminates the stories of premodern rebellions from the ancient world, as well as medieval European revolts and more recent events, up to the Arab Spring of 2011. Arjomand categorizes revolutions in two groups: ones that expand the existing body politic and power structure, and ones that aim to erode—but paradoxically augment—their authority. The revolutions of the past, he tells us, can shed light on the causes of those of the present and future: as long as centralized states remain powerful, there will be room for greater, and perhaps forceful, integration of the politically disenfranchised.