Contesting the Moral High Ground

Contesting the Moral High Ground PDF Author: Paul T. Phillips
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773541128
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
How four of Britain's best-known thinkers influenced the public consciousness on issues from God to the environment.

Contesting the Moral High Ground

Contesting the Moral High Ground PDF Author: Paul T. Phillips
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773541128
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book

Book Description
How four of Britain's best-known thinkers influenced the public consciousness on issues from God to the environment.

Contesting the Moral High Ground

Contesting the Moral High Ground PDF Author: Paul T. Phillips
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
ISBN: 0773588345
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
In mid-twentieth century Britain, four intellectuals - Julian Huxley, Bertrand Russell, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Barbara Ward - held sway over popular conceptions of morality. While Huxley and Russell championed ideas informed by agnosticism and atheism, Muggeridge and Ward were adherents to Christianity. In Contesting the Moral High Ground, Paul Phillips reveals how this fundamental dichotomy was representative of British society at the time, and how many of the ideologies promoted by these four moralists are still present today. As world-class public figures in an open forum of debate, Huxley, Russell, Muggeridge, and Ward all achieved considerable public attention, particularly during the turbulent 1960s. Phillips captures the rebellious spirit of the time, detailing how these thinkers exploited the popular media to disseminate ideas on prevailing social issues - from justice and world peace to protection of the environment. Phillips skilfully traces the foundations of their thought to their earlier careers and social movements of previous generations, and shows how many of their approaches were adopted by a host of present-day groups from the Christian Right and Left to the New Atheists and environmentalists. A significant contribution to British intellectual history, Contesting the Moral High Ground provides new insights into the moral philosophies of four of Britain's most influential minds in the twentieth century.

Searching for God in Britain and Beyond

Searching for God in Britain and Beyond PDF Author: David G. Reagles
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228010071
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
When writer and media personality Malcolm Muggeridge unexpectedly converted to Christianity in the 1960s, fans around the world flocked to his devotional writings and television programs about his spiritual journey. Because Muggeridge was critical of institutional Christianity and initially refused to join a church, he inspired a special affinity in those who were disillusioned with mainstream religious authority. Readers from around the world sent him deeply personal letters describing their spiritual and religious lives, revealing their anxieties, doubts, and hopes about the future of Christianity. In Searching for God in Britain and Beyond David Reagles draws on nearly two thousand of these remarkable fan letters to explore the thoughts and feelings of ordinary Christians in a time of cultural and religious upheaval. In these candid letters, Muggeridge’s correspondents wrestled with their experiences of faith and doubt, the value of institutional religion, uncertainties about permissiveness in society, the proper role of Christian social activism, and the forces of secularism. For these fans and skeptics alike, reading and writing were a vital means of working out their religious identities and convictions amid the supposed decline of Christendom. Searching for God in Britain and Beyond provides a rare and fascinating glimpse into the inner worlds of ordinary Christians in the 1960s and 1970s, revealing how the secularization of postwar society felt to average people.

Truth, Morality, and Meaning in History

Truth, Morality, and Meaning in History PDF Author: Paul T. Phillips
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487530390
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
In this important new book, Paul T. Phillips argues that most professional historians – aside from a relatively small number devoted to theory and methodology – have concerned themselves with particular, specialized areas of research, thereby ignoring the fundamental questions of truth, morality, and meaning. This is less so in the thriving general community of history enthusiasts beyond academia, and may explain, in part at least, history’s sharp decline as a subject of choice by students in recent years. Phillips sees great dangers resulting from the thinking of extreme relativists and postmodernists on the futility of attaining historical truth, especially in the age of "post-truth." He also believes that moral judgment and the search for meaning in history should be considered part of the discipline’s mandate. In each section of this study, Phillips outlines the nature of individual issues and past efforts to address them, including approaches derived from other disciplines. This book is a call to action for all those engaged in the study of history to direct more attention to the fundamental questions of truth, morality, and meaning.

Fighting over God

Fighting over God PDF Author: Janet Epp Buckingham
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773590706
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
From before Confederation to the present day, religion has been one of the most contentious issues in Canadian public life. In Fighting over God, Janet Buckingham surveys a vast array of religious conflicts, exploring both their political aspects and the court cases that were part of their resolution. While topics such as the Manitoba Schools Crisis and debates about Sunday shopping are familiar territory, Buckingham focuses on lesser-known conflicts such as those over the education of Doukhobor and Mennonite children and the banning of the Jehovah's Witness religion under the Defence of Canada Regulations during the Second World War. Subjects are explored thematically with chapters on the history of religious broadcasting, education, freedom of expression, religious practices, marriage and family, and religious institutions. Contentious issues about religious accommodation are not going away. Fighting over God cites over six hundred legal cases, across nearly four centuries, to provide a rich context for the ongoing social debate about the place of religion in our increasingly secular society.

Race, Taste and the Grape

Race, Taste and the Grape PDF Author: Paul Nugent
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 100920405X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
Offers a detailed history of Cape wine from the late nineteenth century to the present, exposing how race has shaped patterns of consumption through statistics, marketing and advertising materials. Considers how regulation of the industry arose, why it failed, and what the impact of this has been locally and globally.

Ethics and Activism

Ethics and Activism PDF Author: Michael L. Gross
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521580977
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Responsible citizens are expected to combine ethical judgement with judiciously exercised social activism to preserve the moral foundation of democratic society and prevent political injustice. But do they? Utilizing a research model integrating insights from rational choice theory and cognitive developmental psychology this book, first published in 1997, carefully explores three exemplary cases of morally inspired activism: Jewish rescue in wartime Europe, abortion politics in the United States, and peace and settler activism in Israel. From all three analyses a single conclusion emerges: the most politically competent individuals are, most often, the least morally competent. This is the central paradox of political morality. These findings cast doubt on strong models of political morality characterized by enlightened moral reasoning and concerted political action while affirming alternative weak models that fuse activism with sectarian moral interests. They provide empirical support to further upend the liberal vision of democratic character, education, and society.

EU Global Actorness in a World of Contested Leadership

EU Global Actorness in a World of Contested Leadership PDF Author: Maria Raquel Freire
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030929973
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This book contributes to the literature on the EU’s role in the international system by engaging with the debates on global actorness and mapping new conceptual and theoretical avenues to better understand how agency and power are exerted at the global and regional levels, in a context of increased contestation of the international liberal order. Organised around three main lines, the book first looks at how the EU positions itself internationally in different policy areas, providing a multi-dimensional reading of EU policies, instruments, and practices; secondly, it engages with the EU’s own perspective toward its regional contexts and with the perspectives of regional actors on the EU; and, thirdly, it explores non-European perspectives on EU actorness, as the way the EU is perceived by others in this system of contested leadership is central to how it is understood in terms of policies, instruments, and overall capability to lead and act as a global power.

Protracted Contest

Protracted Contest PDF Author: John W. Garver
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295801204
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 462

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Book Description
Ever since the two ancient nations of India and China established modern states in the mid-20th century, they have been locked in a complex rivalry ranging across the South Asian region. Garver offers a scrupulous examination of the two countries’ actions and policy decisions over the past fifty years. He has interviewed many of the key figures who have shaped their diplomatic history and has combed through the public and private statements made by officials, as well as the extensive record of government documents and media reports. He presents a thorough and compelling account of the rivalry between these powerful neighbors and its influence on the region and the larger world.

The Politics of Faith during the Civil War

The Politics of Faith during the Civil War PDF Author: Timothy L. Wesley
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807150029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
In The Politics of Faith during the Civil War, Timothy L. Wesley examines the engagement of both northern and southern preachers in politics during the American Civil War, revealing an era of denominational, governmental, and public scrutiny of religious leaders. Controversial ministers risked ostracism within the local community, censure from church leaders, and arrests by provost marshals or local police. In contested areas of the Upper Confederacy and Border Union, ministers occasionally faced deadly violence for what they said or would not say from their pulpits. Even silence on political issues did not guarantee a preacher's security, as both sides arrested clergymen who defied the dictates of civil and military authorities by refusing to declare their loyalty in sermons or to pray for the designated nation, army, or president. The generation that fought the Civil War lived in arguably the most sacralized culture in the history of the United States. The participation of church members in the public arena meant that ministers wielded great authority. Wesley outlines the scope of that influence and considers, conversely, the feared outcomes of its abuse. By treating ministers as both individual men of conscience and leaders of religious communities, Wesley reveals that the reticence of otherwise loyal ministers to bring politics into the pulpit often grew not out of partisan concerns but out of doctrinal, historical, and local factors. The Politics of Faith during the Civil War sheds new light on the political motivations of homefront clergymen during wartime, revealing how and why the Civil War stands as the nation's first concerted campaign to check the ministry's freedom of religious expression.