Author: Nadim N. Rouhana
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108487866
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415
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Book Description
This book provides a comparative, interdisciplinary analysis of the invocation and interaction of religious and national assertions in sacralizing local and global politics.
Author: Emilio Gentile
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400827213
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
Emilio Gentile, an internationally renowned authority on fascism and totalitarianism, argues that politics over the past two centuries has often taken on the features of religion, claiming as its own the prerogative of defining the fundamental purpose and meaning of human life. Secular political entities such as the nation, the state, race, class, and the party became the focus of myths, rituals, and commandments and gradually became objects of faith, loyalty, and reverence. Gentile examines this "sacralization of politics," as he defines it, both historically and theoretically, seeking to identify the different ways in which political regimes as diverse as fascism, communism, and liberal democracy have ultimately depended, like religions, on faith, myths, rites, and symbols. Gentile maintains that the sacralization of politics as a modern phenomenon is distinct from the politicization of religion that has arisen from militant religious fundamentalism. Sacralized politics may be democratic, in the form of a civil religion, or it may be totalitarian, in the form of a political religion. Using this conceptual distinction, and moving from America to Europe, and from Africa to Asia, Gentile presents a unique comparative history of civil and political religions from the American and French Revolutions, through nationalism and socialism, democracy and totalitarianism, fascism and communism, up to the present day. It is also a fascinating book for understanding the sacralization of politics after 9/11.
Author: J. Christopher Soper
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107189438
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
Offers a new framework for understanding how religion and nationalism interact across diverse countries and religious traditions.
Author: Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108429874
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
Advances theorization of childhood in contexts of racialized settler-colonial political violence while acknowledging children's power to interrupt it.
Author: Ronald G. Asch
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782383573
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
France and England are often seen as monarchies standing at opposite ends of the spectrum of seventeenth-century European political culture. On the one hand the Bourbon monarchy took the high road to absolutism, while on the other the Stuarts never quite recovered from the diminution of their royal authority following the regicide of Charles I in 1649. However, both monarchies shared a common medieval heritage of sacral kingship, and their histories remained deeply entangled throughout the century. This study focuses on the interaction between ideas of monarchy and images of power in the two countries between the execution of Mary Queen of Scots and the Glorious Revolution. It demonstrates that even in periods when politics were seemingly secularized, as in France at the end of the Wars of Religion, and in latter seventeenth- century England, the appeal to religious images and values still lent legitimacy to royal authority by emphasizing the sacral aura or providential role which church and religion conferred on monarchs.
Author: Jennifer Mara DeSilva
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317016785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345
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Book Description
In the Early Modern period - as both reformed and Catholic churches strove to articulate orthodox belief and conduct through texts, sermons, rituals, and images - communities grappled frequently with the connection between sacred space and behavior. The Sacralization of Space and Behavior in the Early Modern World explores individual and community involvement in the approbation, reconfiguration and regulation of sacred spaces and the behavior (both animal and human) within them. The individual’s understanding of sacred space, and consequently the behavior appropriate within it, depended on local need, group dynamics, and the dissemination of normative expectations. While these expectations were defined in a growing body of confessionalizing literature, locally and internationally traditional clerical authorities found their decisions contested, circumvented, or elaborated in order to make room for other stakeholders’ activities and needs. To clearly reveal the efforts of early modern groups to negotiate authority and the transformation of behavior with sacred space, this collection presents examples that allow the deconstruction of these tensions and the exploration of the resulting campaigns within sacred space. Based on new archival research the eleven chapters in this collection examine diverse aspects of the campaigns to transform Christian behavior within a variety of types of sacred space and through a spectrum of media. These essays give voice to the arguments, exhortations, and accusations that surrounded the activities taking place in early modern sacred space and reveal much about how people made sense of these transformations.
Author: Daniel H. Nexon
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 140083080X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
Scholars have long argued over whether the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended more than a century of religious conflict arising from the Protestant Reformations, inaugurated the modern sovereign-state system. But they largely ignore a more fundamental question: why did the emergence of new forms of religious heterodoxy during the Reformations spark such violent upheaval and nearly topple the old political order? In this book, Daniel Nexon demonstrates that the answer lies in understanding how the mobilization of transnational religious movements intersects with--and can destabilize--imperial forms of rule. Taking a fresh look at the pivotal events of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries--including the Schmalkaldic War, the Dutch Revolt, and the Thirty Years' War--Nexon argues that early modern "composite" political communities had more in common with empires than with modern states, and introduces a theory of imperial dynamics that explains how religious movements altered Europe's balance of power. He shows how the Reformations gave rise to crosscutting religious networks that undermined the ability of early modern European rulers to divide and contain local resistance to their authority. In doing so, the Reformations produced a series of crises in the European order and crippled the Habsburg bid for hegemony. Nexon's account of these processes provides a theoretical and analytic framework that not only challenges the way international relations scholars think about state formation and international change, but enables us to better understand global politics today.
Author: Gérard Bouchard
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 144262907X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
In Social Myths and Collective Imaginaries, G?rard Bouchard conceptualizes myths as vessels of sacred values that transcend the division between primitive and modern. These vessels become so influential as to make an indelible impression on people's minds.
Author: Jonathan Haidt
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307455777
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 530
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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed social psychologist challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike—a “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review). Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.
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.
