Pacifist Prophet

Pacifist Prophet PDF Author: Richard W. Pointer
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496223586
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
Pacifist Prophet recounts the untold history of peaceable Native Americans in the eighteenth century, as explored through the world of Papunhank (ca. 1705–75), a Munsee and Moravian prophet, preacher, reformer, and diplomat. Papunhank’s life was dominated by a search for a peaceful homeland in Pennsylvania and the Ohio country amid the upheavals of the era between the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution. His efforts paralleled other Indian quests for autonomy but with a crucial twist: he was a pacifist committed to using only nonviolent means. Such an approach countered the messages of other Native prophets and ran against the tide in an early American world increasingly wrecked with violence, racial hatred, and political turmoil. Nevertheless, Papunhank was not alone. He followed and contributed to a longer and wider indigenous peace tradition. Richard W. Pointer shows how Papunhank pushed beyond the pragmatic pacifism of other Indians and developed from indigenous and Christian influences a principled pacifism that became the driving force of his life and leadership. Hundreds of Native people embraced his call to be “a great Lover of Peace” in their quests for home. Against formidable odds, Papunhank’s prophetic message spoke boldly to Euro-American and Native centers of power and kept many Indians alive during a time when their very survival was constantly threatened. Papunhank’s story sheds critical new light on the responses of some Munsees, Delawares, Mahicans, Nanticokes, and Conoys for whom the “way of war” was no way at all.

Pacifist Prophet

Pacifist Prophet PDF Author: Richard W. Pointer
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496223586
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Get Book

Book Description
Pacifist Prophet recounts the untold history of peaceable Native Americans in the eighteenth century, as explored through the world of Papunhank (ca. 1705–75), a Munsee and Moravian prophet, preacher, reformer, and diplomat. Papunhank’s life was dominated by a search for a peaceful homeland in Pennsylvania and the Ohio country amid the upheavals of the era between the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution. His efforts paralleled other Indian quests for autonomy but with a crucial twist: he was a pacifist committed to using only nonviolent means. Such an approach countered the messages of other Native prophets and ran against the tide in an early American world increasingly wrecked with violence, racial hatred, and political turmoil. Nevertheless, Papunhank was not alone. He followed and contributed to a longer and wider indigenous peace tradition. Richard W. Pointer shows how Papunhank pushed beyond the pragmatic pacifism of other Indians and developed from indigenous and Christian influences a principled pacifism that became the driving force of his life and leadership. Hundreds of Native people embraced his call to be “a great Lover of Peace” in their quests for home. Against formidable odds, Papunhank’s prophetic message spoke boldly to Euro-American and Native centers of power and kept many Indians alive during a time when their very survival was constantly threatened. Papunhank’s story sheds critical new light on the responses of some Munsees, Delawares, Mahicans, Nanticokes, and Conoys for whom the “way of war” was no way at all.

Prophets of Peace

Prophets of Peace PDF Author: Robert Kisala
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824822675
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Wars in the Persian Gulf and Yugoslavia have given new impetus to the ongoing debate in Japan concerning its postwar constitution and related issues of national security and world order. Although often overlooked in this debate, Japanese religious groups--especially some of the New Religions--have promoted peace as a major theme of their doctrine and activities, often explicitly supporting a pacifist position. This study, undertaken in the wake of the Persian Gulf War, looks at a representative group of New Religions and explores their concepts and practices of peace. Many of the Japanese New Religions draw on a tradition that emphasizes individual moral cultivation and use of prewar terms to describe their mission. One expression, hakko ichiu (literally, "the whole world under one roof") conveys the ideal of world unity under Japanese direction, leading to the establishment of peace. In this way it is a prime example of the prewar idea of establishing peace through the spread of Japanese civilization. The author cites evidence pointing to the prevalence of a mistaken notion of the implications of the pacifist position, a situation that both reflects and contributes to the confusion surrounding popular debates on pacifism in Japan. Prophets of Peace is an attempt to correct that misperception by providing a critical study of the social ethic of the Japanese New Religions--a topic that has been largely ignored in research on new religious movements worldwide. Professor Kisala draws on the literature that presents their doctrine and surveys their believers to describe their approach to the question of peace. The results of this fieldwork are placed within the dual framework of Western peace studies and the modern Japanese intellectual tradition, highlighting the issues of pacifism and the cultural approach to peace in Japan. In his analysis of these results, he offers some observations on the role of religion in contemporary Japanese society and advocates a more positive engagement in the debate on Japan's role in international security arrangements. By offering a representative sample of New Religion groups and focusing on their doctrines, Prophets of Peace provides a different perspective for those whose primary interest is the Japanese New Religions. Although students and scholars of Japanese religion will be the book's first audience, its accessibility and thematic approach also recommend it to readers with a broader interest in contemporary Japanese society, peace studies, and the role of religious groups in modern society.

Prophetic Realism

Prophetic Realism PDF Author: Ronald Stone
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780567026415
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
After September 11, 2001, ordinary citizens faced a new world ruled by political and religious machinations against the threat of terrorism. While political leaders pursued a policy of militarism, many religious leaders advocated pacifism. Ronald H. Stone advocates a middle road between these two extremes, what he calls prophetic realism. Taking up Reinhold Niebuhr's notion of Christian realism, Stone argues that our current situation calls for hard answers to hard questions. Stone offers compelling evidence that Jesus provides the prophetic model of our interaction with our enemies. This book will change people's minds about the relationship of religion and politics in the contemporary world.

Journeys Into the Heart and Heartland of Islam

Journeys Into the Heart and Heartland of Islam PDF Author: Marvin W. Heyboer
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing
ISBN: 1434901882
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description


Lost Prophet

Lost Prophet PDF Author: John D'emilio
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143913748X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
Bayard Rustin is one of the most important figures in the history of the American civil rights movement. Before Martin Luther King, before Malcolm X, Bayard Rustin was working to bring the cause to the forefront of America's consciousness. A teacher to King, an international apostle of peace, and the organizer of the famous 1963 March on Washington, he brought Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence to America and helped launch the civil rights movement. Nonetheless, Rustin has been largely erased by history, in part because he was an African American homosexual. Acclaimed historian John D'Emilio tells the full and remarkable story of Rustin's intertwined lives: his pioneering and public person and his oblique and stigmatized private self. It was in the tumultuous 1930s that Bayard Rustin came of age, getting his first lessons in politics through the Communist Party and the unrest of the Great Depression. A Quaker and a radical pacifist, he went to prison for refusing to serve in World War II, only to suffer a sexual scandal. His mentor, the great pacifist A. J. Muste, wrote to him, "You were capable of making the 'mistake' of thinking that you could be the leader in a revolution...at the same time that you were a weakling in an extreme degree and engaged in practices for which there was no justification." Freed from prison after the war, Rustin threw himself into the early campaigns of the civil rights and anti-nuclear movements until an arrest for sodomy nearly destroyed his career. Many close colleagues and friends abandoned him. For years after, Rustin assumed a less public role even though his influence was everywhere. Rustin mentored a young and inexperienced Martin Luther King in the use of nonviolence. He planned strategy for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference until Congressman Adam Clayton Powell threatened to spread a rumor that King and Rustin were lovers. Not until Rustin's crowning achievement as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington would he finally emerge from the shadows that homophobia cast over his career. Rustin remained until his death in 1987 committed to the causes of world peace, racial equality, and economic justice. Based on more than a decade of archival research and interviews with dozens of surviving friends and colleagues of Rustin's, Lost Prophet is a triumph. Rustin emerges as a hero of the black freedom struggle and a singularly important figure in the lost gay history of the mid-twentieth century. John D'Emilio's compelling narrative rescues a forgotten figure and brings alive a time of great hope and great tragedy in the not-so-distant past.

Jonah in the Shadows of Eden

Jonah in the Shadows of Eden PDF Author: Yitzhak Berger
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253021413
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Yitzhak Berger advances a distinctive and markedly original interpretation of the biblical book of Jonah that resolves many of the ambiguities in the text. Berger contends that the Jonah text pulls from many inner-biblical connections, especially ones relating to the Garden of Eden. These connections provide a foundation for Berger's reading of the story, which attributes multiple layers of meaning to this carefully crafted biblical book. Focusing on Jonah's futile quest and his profoundly troubled response to God's view of the sins of humanity, Berger shows how the book paints Jonah as a pacifist no less than as a moralist.

Radicalism and Political Reform in the Islamic and Western Worlds

Radicalism and Political Reform in the Islamic and Western Worlds PDF Author: Kai Hafez
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139489046
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Over the last decade, political Islam has been denounced in the Western media and in the surrounding literature as a terrorist or fascist movement that is entirely at odds with Western democratic ideology. Kai Hafez's book overturns these arguments, contending that, despite its excesses, as a radical form of political opposition the movement plays a central role in the processes of democratization and modernization, and that these processes have direct parallels in the history and politics of the West. By analyzing the evolution of Christian democratization through the upheavals of the Reformation, colonisation, fascism, and totalitarianism, the book shows how radicalism and violence were constant accompaniments to political change, and that these components - despite assertions to the contrary - are still part of Western political culture to this day.

Proclaim Peace

Proclaim Peace PDF Author: Theron F. Schlabach
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252065880
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description


Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism

Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism PDF Author: Mohammad Hassan Khalil
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108421547
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 207

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Book Description
This book compares the conflicting and consequential interpretations of jihad offered by mainstream Muslim scholars, violent Muslim radicals, and New Atheists.

Philosophers of Peace and War

Philosophers of Peace and War PDF Author: W. B. Gallie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521217798
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Intellectual eminence apart, what did Kant, Clausewitz, Marx and Engels, and Tolstoy have in common? Professor Gallic argues that they made contributions to 'international theory' - to the understanding of the character and causes of war and of the possibility of peace between nations - which were of unrivalled originality in their own times and remain of undiminished importance in ours. But these contributions have been either ignored or much misunderstood ; chiefly because, as with all intellectual efforts in unexplored fields, they were often imperfectly expressed, and were also overshadowed by their author's more striking achievements. Professor Gallic has sorted out, compared and contrasted, criticised and re-phrased the teachings of his chosen authors on peace and war.