Writers and politics in West Germany

This article argues that Archibald Campbell's Necessity of Revelation (1739) can be viewed as the first application of the ‘science of human nature’, a characteristic branch of the Scottish Enlightenment, to the study of religious belief. Adopting Baconian and Newtonian methodological principles, Campbell set hypotheses, collected historical data, and inferred conclusions about the capabilities of human nature to come to fundamental religious ideas without the aid of revelation. He did so not only to reject the ‘deist’ position on the powers of unassisted human reason, associated with Matthew Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730), but also to refute Campbell's conservative critics within the Church of Scotland who had earlier tried him for heresy. Campbell's example is that of a university professor using the experimental study of religion to defeat both radical freethinking and Calvinist orthodoxy. His work is another instance of the complicated relationship between science and religion within eighteenth-century Scotland.     

Dominion of the Spirit over the Flesh: Religion,Gender and Sexual Morality in the German Women's Movement before World War I

This article examines the place of religious values in the thinking of leading figures in the mainstream German women's movement in the period before World War I. Focusing on the debate of sexual morality and abortion within the German League of Women's Associations, it argues that the position taken by these women is best understood as a product of their religious commitments, rather than their political ideas. The article seeks to place these women in the historical context of a particular liberal, Protestant, social and intellectual milieu that flourished in the period before 1914.     

Hume,Bishop Butler,and the Revival of Ritual in Anglophone Protestantism

A sweeping reassessment of the role of ritual, ceremony, and aesthetics took place in anglophone Protestantism between the late eighteenth and the late nineteenth centuries. While the nineteenth‐century developments themselves have been extensively studied, little scholarly attention has been paid to the importance of the earlier emergence of philosophical language capable of explaining and justifying, in a Protestant context, the ritual and aesthetic dimensions of religious practice. I argue that this language, paradoxically, grew out of a symbiosis of sceptical modernity, traditional religious apologetics, and the religious “enthusiasm” of the early eighteenth century. I approach the topic through the interconnected oeuvres (and careers) of David Hume and Joseph Butler, presenting the first synoptic account of their ideas about the psychological underpinnings of religious worship, and the use made of their ideas by later generations of anglophone Protestants. As mainstream Anglicans, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians confronted the challenges presented by Methodism and Evangelicalism, they found support in a synthesis of Butler's and Hume's ideas. Eventually, the beneficial role of ritual and aesthetics in religious worship came to be widely accepted throughout the anglophone Protestant world.     

“This Greater Issue of Light against Darkness”: Sereno Edwards Bishop,Missionary Religion,and the Hawaiian Islands, 1827–1909

The history of nineteenth‐century missions provide a fruitful field to explore the development of religious thought and practice in a secular setting. This article shows how the religious views of the clergyman and educator Sereno Edwards Bishop, born in Hawai‘i of American missionary parents, were shaped by his childhood among the mission community in Hawai‘i and by his American college education. These instilled in him a liberal approach to theology that was informed by a spiritually alert sense of Hawaiian geography and environment. Contrary to the notion that he cast his faith aside in addressing matters of wider social and political importance, Bishop emerges as someone who thought critically about mid‐nineteenth‐century Protestant Christianity, grounding his perspective on politics, society, and natural history in Hawai‘i according to his religious principles. Given Bishop’s specific intellectual and cultural heritage, it is difficult to subsume his perspective within broader narratives of American expansion; rather, both Pacific and mainland American elements shaped the thought of such mission‐descended figures.     

I,Claudius. Self‐styling in early medieval debate

Historians often have difficulties understanding contrary figures who deviated from mainstream practices and beliefs. In the case of Claudius of Turin, who because of his iconoclasm has been pictured as a proto‐Protestant, this image of a solitary was partly his own creation. Claudius liked to present himself as a truth‐teller, defending God's honour and the unity of the church against all kinds of evils. This article uses the case of Claudius and the response of Dungal, one of his learned opponents, like him connected to the royal court, to reflect on the role of self‐styling in early medieval debate.     

Interest,Trade and ‘Character and Circumstances': John Campbell's (1708–1775) Earlier Work

John Campbell's (1708-1775) commercial theory in his early work demonstrates that he held more sophisticated views on British colonialism than previously thought. Campbell draws upon complex influences, which include Charles Davenant's notion of free trade and his ‘Old Whig’ arguments against corruption; Daniel Defoe's ‘new Whig’ arguments for progress and John Locke's arguments on industry and property; and Bolingbroke's Tory arguments for emphasizing common interest. By blending these ideas, Campbell offers a distinctive commercial theory that prioritizes the recognition of the interest and circumstances of all nations and peoples within an unconstrained and reciprocal exchange of commodities in order for the home nation simultaneously to resist corruption and flourish.     

Lay Defender of Catholicism: Dr. Edward Swarbreck Hall in Tasmania 1833–1881

Tensions between Protestants and Catholics persisted throughout nineteenth‐century Australia. Historians have tended to examine the part played by the clergy, pressure groups or newspapers in sectarian disputes in the main colonies of New South Wales and Victoria. This article contributes to an understanding of anti‐Catholicism in the Australian colonies by focusing on the actions and writings of one Catholic layman, Dr Edward Swarbreck Hall, in mid nineteenth‐century Tasmania. To minimise religious hostility, Hall was tolerant towards Protestants, loyal to the British Crown, and worked co‐operatively with other creeds in helping the poor. This approach made Catholicism more acceptable to Protestant society until the late 1860s. Thereafter religious divisions became more pronounced with the appointment of Irish Bishop Daniel Murphy, who adopted the authoritarian policies of the papacy and asserted the rights of Catholics. Feeling threatened by Catholic assertion and antagonised by Catholic doctrinal beliefs, Evangelical Protestants expressed anti‐Catholic sentiments at public meetings and in newspapers. In showing how Hall defended Catholics when aspersions were cast on their clergymen, their character, or their religious practices, this article concludes that Catholics were not passive victims, but Hall's fierce polemical style worked against his desire for religious peace.     

“The producers on the one side,and the capitalists on the other”: Labor Reform,Slavery, and the Career of a Transatlantic Radical

Abstract

Through exploring the neglected career of John Campbell, an Irish-born Chartist refugee who ascended to a leadership role in the antebellum American labor movement, this article seeks to shed light on how revolutionary upheaval in Europe, debates over immigration, and sectional conflict affected working-class politics. Focusing on the period 1848 to 1851, and tracing Campbell's rapid evolution from a radical opponent of slavery to an ardent supporter of black subjugation, I argue that labor historians need to pay closer attention to shifting local and national contexts to understand the racial politics of labor agitators. Yet even as Campbell's views changed, his commitment to a producerist vision remained constant; by 1851 he had simply added people of African descent to a list of “idle” nonproducers who lived off the labor of workingmen. His proslavery twist on producer ideology suggests historians of antebellum social relations may need to go beyond interrogating the racial dimensions of artisan republicanism to gain a fuller understanding of the variety of working-class attitudes to race.     

Unstable properties: British Columbia,aboriginal title,and the “new relationship”

In the span of a few years, Premier Gordon Campbell transformed himself from a strong political critic of Aboriginal peoples in British Columbia to their apparent champion within a “new relationship.” The subsequent sudden collapse of Campbell's alliance with First Nations is a window into federal‐provincial relations, constitutional change, Aboriginal political organization, and the consequences of decisions made more than a century ago. Drawing on Nietzsche, we argue that Campbell's intentions, either to control or support Aboriginal peoples, were almost irrelevant; our focus should be on the “will to power” and efforts to stabilize power through territory. As a result of the collision of Aboriginal political mobilization, the expansion of natural resource development, and a series of court decisions, the unresolved nature of Canada's territorial claim to most of the land that is now British Columbia has finally reached a point where it can no longer be ignored, either politically or legally. However, the province lacks the legal authority to recognize or deny Aboriginal title, leaving the provincial government and indigenous peoples in British Columbia equally held hostage by the federal government.     

How Far Could Free Religious Thinking Go? The Case of Johann Rudolf Werdmüller,Zurich 1658

In 1658, Johann(es) Rudolf Werdmüller, a renowned Zurich general and diplomat, was accused of blasphemy. As it referred to essential religious matters, the accusation had a considerable public impact. The court files of the case provide evidence of wider battles over the desirability and nature of religious tolerance. Instead of narrating a case story this analysis suggests a different approach to the history of religion. The sources are not taken as documents expressing a discursive system of philosophical points of view and their appearance in religious polemics. Rather, the court files stand for specific speech acts, i.e. verbal performances in the linguistic sense. Thus, Werdmüller's example is taken to demonstrate that those considered to be blasphemers in the era of confessionalisation did not simply express religious scepticism in the form of “discourses,” nor did they rebel against authority figures or resort to forms of magic. Rather, they provoked their society, discussed religious matters, entertained their audience and competed wittingly with those interested in religious issues. In conclusion, it is proposed that the history of religion should not be confined to a history of ideas and religious doctrines but should integrate linguistic approaches.     

Archaeology and the Irish rediscovery of the Celtic past

This article examines the place of archaeology in the second wave of Irish cultural nationalism, and how archaeological findings were appropriated by rival ethno‐religious communities in Ireland. In particular, it focuses on George Petrie, who was the founder of ‘scientific’ archaeology and was also one of the leading figures in the nineteenth‐century Celtic revival that sought a moral regeneration of the Irish nation In Ireland, as elsewhere, archaeology was important in reconstructing an early history of the nation where few written records existed and in making this visible through material artefacts. However, archaeology was only significant as part of a wider cultural revival that presented artefacts and sites as national symbols to an island undergoing rapid social change. This article will explore the relationship between archaeology and this national revival, and how the material objects recovered by archaeologists extended and transformed the existing repertoires of how the nation was imagined and felt. It will assess the different reception of these images in the rival Catholic and Protestant communities. Finally, it will comment on the capacity of a medieval ‘Celtic’ repertoire to provide the basis of a dynamic modern Irish national culture.     

In Loving Memory of Mary Belshaw,May McRidge,and the Nyungar People of the Badjaling Mission, 1930–1954

Using examples from his family and religious history, Patrick O’Farrell analysed the transition from Irish emigrant to assimilated colonial in what was perceived as vacant land. Like O’Farrell, this article will also use family history to address the issues of memory, religion, and assimilation. The Irish weaver Mary Belshaw (1879–1960) came to Australia in 1913 and was instrumental in the emigration of her family to Australia during the 1920s. She worked as a Protestant missionary among Aboriginal Australians from 1915, until her retirement in 1953. Although the grave she shares with her co‐worker May McRidge (1882–1943) bears the words “Ever remembered by what she has done,” her story was largely forgotten by her family. In 1986, the Nyungar people erected a memorial stone to Belshaw and McRidge and the thirty‐nine Nyungar families who lived at the Badjaling Mission in Western Australia from 1930 to 1954. This article will address the wider issues in twentieth‐century Australia which contributed to the neglect of the story by Belshaw's Irish Australian family and then led to its recovery. It will reveal how an Irish heritage was rediscovered because the story lived within a Nyungar community who had survived terra nullius and assimilation policies to return to their land at Badjaling.     

The Forgotten History of the Protestant Crusade: Religious Liberalism in Ireland1

Irish historians do not generally identify religious liberalism as a feature of the 1820s. Instead, they have mapped religious conflict onto increasingly binary conflicts in the socio‐economic, cultural, and political spheres. The “Second Reformation” missionary movement put evangelicals and Catholics on a direct collision course and, consequently, historians have argued that it was a key factor in the emergence both of Irish Catholic nationalism and Protestant defensive co‐operation. However, the Crusade also produced a strong Protestant backlash alongside the growing sectarian conflict. In County Limerick, for example, two versions of Church of Ireland opposition emerged during 1820, among high church clergy including Bishop Jebb and among liberal Protestant gentlemen. Instead of closing down debate into rigid binary opposition along sectarian lines, the Limerick evidence shows that the Crusade produced a much more complex religious, social, and political debate than historians have recognised which, in turn, made possible a wider range of responses to key Irish problems.     

NAZISM AS A SECULAR RELIGION1

This article examines the implications of Richard Steigmann‐Gall's recent revisionist representation of Nazism as a Christian (Protestant) movement for the increasingly fashionable accounts of Nazism as a secular or political religion. Contrary to Steigmann‐Gall's contention that Protestant Nazism undermines these accounts, I suggest that his portrayal of Nazism as a variant of Protestant millennialism is not necessarily inconsistent with the secular religion approach. A closer look at the so‐called löwith‐Blumenberg debate on secularization indeed reveals that modern utopianisms containing elements of Protestant millennialism are the best candidates for the label of secularized eschatology. That Steigmann‐gall has reached exactly the opposite conclusion is primarily because his conceptual understanding of secular religion is uninformed by the secularization debate. Insofar as Steigmann‐Gall extracts his model of secular religion from contemporary political religion historiography on Nazism, this article points to a larger problem: a disjunction between historians utilizing the concept, on the one hand, and philosophers and social theorists who have shaped it, on the other.     

Between the lodge and the meeting-house: Mapping Irish Protestant identities and social worlds in late Victorian Toronto

The urban lives of Irish Protestant immigrants and their descendants are a neglected feature in geographies of the Irish diaspora. Prominent settlers from the early nineteenth century, they played a key role in the shaping of a host culture in Anglophone Canada. The social and spatial processes that moulded Irish Protestants into a wider loyal British identity are examined at a number of scales in Toronto, 'the Belfast of North America'. After initially exploring the rhetoric and practices of city-wide institutions that served many Irish Protestants, the autobiographical reflections of John McAree are used as a case study on the micro-geographies of everyday lives experienced within local space as well as an empirical test for Bourdieu's ideas of practice and 'habitus'.     

Ann-Cathrin Jarl,In Justice: Women and Global Economics

Abstract

The dialectical relationship between religious and political extremism is one of the most powerful forces in the history of the Christian tradition. Two specific moments have seen a combination of the political and the religious in ways that completely transformed the religion, and the contexts in which it grew and transformed: the sixteenth-century Protestant reformation and the twentieth-century women's movement in the United States were simultaneously products and producers of political theology. A focused study of these eras leads to a proposal about two of the leading figures in the movements: Martin Luther and Mary Daly are political theologians. This label allows a comparative study of the two that leads to significant conclusions for scholars of either era, and of either theologian. We find in this unlikely comparison two reformations that shape part of the tradition that they challenge.     

The cologne map publisher Peter Overadt (fl. 1590–1652)

Abstract

Peter Overadt is one of the many lesser‐known figures of the second generation of the Cologne school of map making, which had been founded about 1570 by Frans Hogenberg. Overadt is noteworthy as the first continental publisher (aside from Jodocus I Hondius, who was at that time active in London) to have decorated printed topographical maps with marginal historical‐political images. During the first phase of his business (1592–1600), he issued eight maps, with a three‐sheet map of Germania as the pinnacle of his production. After 1600, Overadt's firm was primarily engaged in the publication of religious prints with a Catholic orientation. Topographical productions from this later period are three large town views and the re‐issue of a map of the Rhine area, printed from a re‐worked copper plate of 1594 by Theodoor de Bry.     

Mormon Masculinity: Changing Gender Expectations in the Era of Transition from Polygamy to Monogamy, 1890–1920

During the period from 1890 to 1920, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints (LDS) perceived a crisis in the lives of their boys. Like their Protestant contemporaries, Latter‐day Saints spent much time attempting to find a solution. At the same time, the LDS church was experiencing its own unique set of upheavals. In 1890, one of the central tenets of Mormonism – polygamy – had to be replaced with sexual practices that aligned the LDS with wider American society. It was during this transitional period that members and authorities of the LDS church sought to gain respectability in American culture by emphasising the morality and value systems they shared with their middle‐class Protestant contemporaries. As Mormons restructured marriage around the practice of monogamy, they placed the burden of the refashioned religious identity almost exclusively upon men and their bodies. The new Mormon man ushered the LDS church into the American mainstream while maintaining an acceptable difference from that mainstream culture.     

Church,State, and the Holy Land: British Protestant Approaches to Imperial Policy in Palestine, 1917–1948

British Protestants had long held to the notion of a legitimate Protestant interest in the Christian ‘Holy Land’, a concept that helped bolster Britain's political claim to Palestine in the aftermath of the First World War. Evangelical Protestant visions of the return of the Jews to their biblical homeland encouraged imperial support for Zionism and helped define the unique conditions of British mandate rule. But once the British actually assumed power over Palestine, British Protestants began to find themselves seriously at odds over their moral and political obligations in the new possession their interests had helped to shape. This article explores three broad Protestant attitudes towards the question of Britain's policy towards Palestine during the mandate period, demonstrating the ways in which Lambeth Palace, Protestant metropolitan mission institutions, and Protestant church workers in Palestine itself developed radically different conceptions of their religious and political responsibilities in what they regarded as their ‘Holy Land’.     

Archibald Campbell and the Committee for Purity of Doctrine on Natural Reason,Natural Religion,and Revelation

Summary

This article discusses Archibald Campbell's (1691–1756) early writings on religion, and the reactions they provoked from conservative orthodox Presbyterians. Purportedly against the Deist Matthew Tindal, Campbell crucially argued for two claims, namely (i) for the reality of immutable moral laws of nature, and (ii) for the incapacity of natural reason, or the light of nature, to discover the fundamental truths of religion, in particular the existence and perfections of God, and the immortality of the soul. In an episode that had its peak in 1735 and 1736, a Committee for Purity of Doctrine of the Church of Scotland scrutinised Campbell's writings. It attacked the second claim as contradicting Calvinist doctrines concerning the universal guilt of mankind after the Fall, and the first claim as contradicting doctrines concerning justification and salvation, and as supporting Deism. The study of this episode reveals new aspects of how the struggle to define orthodoxy crystallised in philosophical and theological debates in Scotland at the dawn of the Enlightenment, and before the rise of the Moderates.