“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.     

Judd's China: a missionary congressman and US–China policy

Congressman Walter Henry Judd was an active player in Sino–US relations in the twentieth century. Unique for an American Congressman, he served for 10 years as a medical missionary in China. This article examines his motivation for going to China, his perceptions of Chinese culture, society, and politics, and the impact of Chinese culture on him. It demonstrates that cultural influence is not a one‐way process, but reciprocal. Judd's views of China and his ardent Christian beliefs made him in turn a liberal missionary and a conservative anti‐Communist congressman with a significant role in Sino–US relations. His political behavior was profoundly influenced by both ideology and the attitudes and judgments shaped by his 10 years in China.     

The Secularization of Providential Order: F. A. Hayek's Political-Economic Theology

In this article I argue that the concept of spontaneous order that underlies F. A. Hayek's political-economic thought is a secularized version of classical liberalism's understanding of order as providential. In Adam Ferguson's writings on history and social order, from which Hayek draws the notion of spontaneous order, the classical liberal paradigm reveals its intimate connection to providential theology. It is in three features of Ferguson's thought, namely his understanding of order, the politics of laissez-faire he dictates, and his providential optimism, that a providential theology reveals itself. Hayek's restatement of liberalism involves the secularization of this notion of order, which forces him both to ground his thought in a different ontology and to formulate a different politics. By contrasting Hayek's political economy to Ferguson's thought I trace the implications of this secularization. In the conclusion I contend that despite his secularizing gesture, Hayek does not succeed at emptying his understanding of order of all theological traces. Consequently, his notion of “spontaneous order” still carries a distinct theological charge, making it impossible for Hayekian political economy to countenance the destruction wrought by markets.     

Barack Obama's Political Theology: Pluralism,Deliberative Democracy,and the Christian Faith

Abstract

Obama won the 2008 election precisely because he crafted a political theology that enabled him to create a truly progressive Democratic Party religious and racial-ethnic minority platform that welcomed pro-choice and pro-life social-justice leaning Catholics and Evangelicals into a new coalition. His political theology was directly influenced by Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright and the black church civil rights tradition, white liberal Protestantism, his mother Ann Dunham's skepticism and free spirit, and Evangelical and Catholic leaders, advisors and opponents. Obama's best and most comprehensive statement on his political theology is his chapter on "Faith" in his New York Times No.1 best-selling autobiography The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006). Obama contends that religiously motivated people must learn the art of compromise, proportion, and how to find shared values. They must translate their religious concerns and vision for America into universal rather than religion-specific values, which must be subject to debate, amenable to reason, and applicable to people of all lifestyles and faiths or no faith at all. They should also be willing to sublimate their ultimate theological and religious convictions for the common collective good. Secular people likewise must adopt a similar approach towards religious people and activists.     

Review articles/Besprekingsartikels

Abstract

Swiss missionary Henri Alexandre Junod has been widely recognised for his extensive entomological, botanical, linguistic and anthropological contributions regarding southern Africa. However, shortly after publishing his most acclaimed work, The Life of a South African Tribe, Junod wrote a little-studied novel, Zidji: étude de m?urs sud-africaines, in which he endeavoured to give a detailed portrayal of South African Society. Interestingly, he chose fiction as the best vehicle for conveying what he saw as the 'truth' of the situation. As the only novel written by Junod this is a unique piece of writing in relation to his other work and its study shows that it is essential to an understanding of Junod. In Zidji he attempts to give a complete picture of South African society at the beginning of the twentieth century by recounting a black convert's experiences of what Junod considered to be the three main influences acting upon black society of the time, that is, tribal life (paganism), the mission station (Christianity) and white society (civilisation). By considering his depiction of South Africa, in particular his presentation of 'civilisation', further light is shed on his sentiments and perspective of the missionary encounter, social change and race relations in South Africa.     

The Reign of Grace: Liberalism and Heresy in the New World

This article examines the controversy surrounding The Reign of Grace (1888), a pamphlet published in Dunedin by William Salmond (d. 1917), a Presbyterian intellectual. It came in for harsh criticism. James MacGregor, a conservative minister, and Adam Johnston, a layman, wrote rebutting pamphlets. The controversy occurred during a period in which Presbyterianism's leadership was dividing along liberal and traditionalist lines. It dominated proceedings at the Presbytery of Dunedin for months, featured at the 1888 Synod of Otago and Southland, and received some coverage abroad. At stake was Salmond's proposal for an extended “reign of grace” that allowed for postmortem repentance. His opponents considered this an attack on Christian mission. I discuss the controversy in terms of Salmond's views on the Bible, his challenge to the Westminster Confession, and his specific proposition for extending grace's “reign.” I argue that while the debate reflected a stark liberal–traditionalist polarisation — something seen particularly in regard to the Confession — there was something further at play. Regarding Salmond's extension of grace's reign, the debate was not between liberals and traditionalists, but between a man largely standing alone against an array of liberals and traditionalists who found his idea dangerous.     

Benedicto Kiwanuka and Catholic Democracy in Uganda

In this article, I introduce Benedicto Kiwanuka (1922–72), Uganda’s first prime minister and most prominent modern Catholic politician, and explore how his religious and political sensibilities — especially his vision of democracy — intersected with Catholic thought and historical experience in Buganda and Uganda. Far from turning him into a “Catholic tribalist” looking to empower Catholics vis à vis other religious groups, Kiwanuka’s Catholic identity was a core component of his political commitment to non-sectarian democracy, the common good, and pan-ethnic nation-building. He saw in Catholicism the possibility of envisioning political solidarity during a moment of social rupture, and he and his Democratic Party used Catholic and biblical discourse and theology to help undergird a broader political commitment to liberal democratic nationalism during Uganda’s transition to independence (1958–62). At the same time, Kiwanuka’s prophetic commitment to principle — an uncompromising dogmatism often expressed in religious and theological language — also helped cost him the opportunity to lead Uganda into and beyond independence.     

Professor C.F.J. Muller as historikus

Joseph Booth's influence on the development of early Christianity in Malâwi has been exaggerated at the expense of the Africans actually involved. Around the turn of the century he introduced a number of industrial missions into the country, but his connection with them was short-lived. Almost as quickly as he set them up he was expelled from their ranks for reasons of financial mismanagement. This happened at least eight times during his missionary career. Money matters proved to be his undoing with Africans as well. Booth's false promises of financial aid to struggling Seventh Day Baptists resulted in an active campaign on their part to rid themselves of him. He also parted ways with John Chilembwe, Elliott Kamwana and Jordan Ansumba. Booth was a man full of contradictions. While preaching brotherhood he quarrelled with everyone; an advocate of Africa for the Africans, he demanded total sub-service from those around him. His anti-colonial message was blighted by taking advantage of a friendship with Harry Johnston to acquire large tracts of land from Africans for very little money. Joseph Booth was an emotionally troubled individual who did more to hinder the spread of Christianity in Central Africa than help it.     

Calvin's Legacy for Public Theology

Abstract

Many thinkers, of whom Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a prominent example, have expressed ambivalence regarding John Calvin's contribution to our understanding of a healthy civic order: while Calvin's political genius is undeniable, he and his followers are also known for intolerant attitudes and practices. Thus the image of "two Calvins" by a recent biographer of the Reformer. In this essay I lay out some relevant tensions in Calvin's political thought, while also identifying underlying themes that were later developed by his followers. Special attention is given to the ways in which the "neo-Calvinist" movement, initiated in the nineteenth century by Abraham Kuyper, both corrected and expanded upon Calvin's theology of public life. It is noted that while Kuyper's thought also influenced the Afrikaners' apartheid ideology, Reformed opponents of apartheid also appealed to elements in Kuyper's theology of public life. Although the results have been mixed, Kuyper and others did demonstrate the ways in which some basic elements of Calvin's thought can be used to address issues that are being given sustained attention today in broad-ranging explorations of what makes for a flourishing civil society characterized by a variety of "mediating structures."     

Elite Analysis of Democracies' International Policy Introduction

This essay offers a critical appreciation of Mark Lilla's Stillborn God. To his credit, Lilla understands the primacy and enduring appeal of political theology, as well as the danger of intellectual complacency about the underlying principles of modern politics. Lilla maintains that modern politics is a relatively recent and radically novel experiment that aims at nothing less than displacing a primordial and perennial way of constituting politics with reference to the divine. My essay compares Lilla's analysis of the fundamental antagonism between political theology and modern liberal politics to Strauss's analysis of the theological-political problem. In doing so, I bring to light both the strengths and limits of Lilla's attempt to clarify the relationship between politics, biblical religion, and philosophic rationalism.     

‘An Angel Directs the Storm’: The Religious Politics of American Neoconservatism

Abstract

In his inaugural speech, President George W. Bush suggested that the mission of America to spread freedom and democracy in the world is a divinely authored mission. The intention first announced in Bush's inaugural to globalize an American Christian vision of freedom and democracy, and of free market capitalism, reflects the theological underpinnings of the neo-conservativism of the Bush administration. In this article I trace the remarkable continuities between the neo-conservative political theology of Bush and his acolytes and more mainstream Niebuhrian approaches to democracy and the ‘manifest destiny’ of America. I then subject the emergence of an American imperium, and the political theology associated with it, to a critique in dialogue with early Christian critics of Roman Empire, and with the Christian pacifist tradition as recently retrieved by North American theological ethicists John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas.     

ET SI C'ÉTAIT PAR LA FIN QUE TOUT COMMENÇAIT? PEN BEFORE PLOT,OR TRESCH ON POE'S REVERSALS

This brief comment offers some reflections on John Tresch's “Compositor's Reversal.” Contrasting his approach with Gaston Bachelard's, I situate Tresch in the tradition of reading Edgar A. Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym as a riddle to be decoded. I suggest that Tresch's analytical emphasis on material composition practices rather than Pym's content opens up insightful ways of reading both Pym itself in terms of its composition, style, and narrative voice, and also Poe's well‐known programmatic Philosophy of Composition. The key achievement of Tresch's article beyond its engagement with Poe scholarship is its contribution to the study of writing practices and media studies more broadly. By demonstrating the tight connection Poe forged between natural theology and the material practice of typography, Tresch inserts the typesetting process as an important step in the historiographical trajectory between pen and typewriter. He shows that the mid‐nineteenth‐century context of natural theology marks a decisive difference in connotation between Poe's compositional play with questions of authorship and plausibility, of truth and appearance both described in and performed by his narrative, and later concerns with the apparatus and its potential for the production of an écriture automatique.     

The Partisan Nature of Race and Imperialism: Dadabhai Naoroji,M. M. Bhownaggree and the Late Nineteenth-Century British Politics of Indian Nationalism

This article examines Dadabhai Naoroji's and Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree's contribution to politically partisan ideologies on Indian empire as London MPs and reform advocates late in the nineteenth century. Exploring politically nuanced, cultural definitions of racial difference, this article reveals how their participation in British parliamentary and press debate on Indian nationalism adhered to distinct liberal and conservative imperial political conceptions of race and governance during this period. Beyond an analysis of Naoroji and the Indian National Congress's relationship with British liberalism, this essay explores Bhownaggree's contribution to a sustained conservative imperial tradition. This article postulates that Edmund Burke's separation from a liberal imperial rationality and a British Tory critique of liberalism informed a nineteenth-century conservative governing justification in India predicated on conciliating organic national racial difference. As Naoroji's devotion, as a Liberal MP for Central Finsbury (1892–95), to a liberal civilising mission informed an advocacy of political self-governance in Britain and India, Bhownaggree's pursuit of female and technical education reform while Conservative MP for Bethnal Green N.E. (1895–1905) represented a conservative espousal of racial difference.     

Negotiating for Space and Autonomy: Strategies of Finnish Missionary Women in Japan, 1900-1941

ABSTRACT. This article focuses on the strategies Finnish women used to influence their status and the missionary practices in the Japan mission of the Lutheran Evangelical Association of Finland during the early part of the 20th century. Women had a head-start in the mission compared to men but lost this later as the organization developed. However, the early years demonstrate how women were able to gain a foothold simply by exceptional circumstances, such as a political turmoil. The crisis years of the Finnish mission in the early 1910s illustrate how organizational rigidity was created at the cost of women's status, but also that everyday work carried out separately from the men's work offered women satisfactory roles regardless of the patriarchal structure. An additional strategy is introduced by the career of one missionary, Siiri Uusitalo. A lifelong career in the mission and a pioneer's status enabled Siiri Uusitalo to carve out an independent position inside the Finnish mission which can be defined as matriarchal. Through the Finnish female missionaries, the contested male control of the mission in the Japanese context is discussed. The article presents one historically unique case that nevertheless points to certain patterns in contesting and redefining the gendered hierarchy in a religious community amidst a foreign culture.     

What is a Salafi Reformist?

Abstract

Tariq Ramadan is one of the most prominent and controversial Western Muslim political thinkers today. He has been called everything from a moderate liberal Muslim thinker to a radical Islamist in disguise. He calls himself a Salafi reformist. According to him, Salafi reformists read the sacred texts of Islam dynamically, using reason, and reject literalist readings. Yet Ramadan also calls Sayyid Qutb a Salafi reformist. The problem is that, by most accounts, Qutb is the quintessential radical Islamist. This raises the question of what Ramadan thinks actually makes someone a Salafi reformist, and what this can tell us about his political teaching. To answer this question, I put Ramadan and Qutb into conversation. I argue that, while Ramadan meets his own criteria for being a Salafi reformist, Qutb does not. I suggest some reasons why Ramadan may not share this view; his political theology tells a different story.     

Civil Liberty in Hobbes's Commonwealth

Hobbes has been long accused of providing a political philosophy that threatens individual liberty. While some commentators have tried to rescue him from this criticism, little attention has been paid to the specifics of his statements on such topics as freedom of speech, censorship, and property rights. In this paper, I examine what Hobbes says on these issues and conclude that his overwhelming priority is to defend liberty once peace has been secured. I conclude by suggesting that Hobbes's political project has some similarities with current liberal proceduralist theories of justice.     

William Bennett's Heresy: Male Same-Sex Desire and the Art of the Eucharist

In 1869, W.J.E. Bennett, one of the most prominent Anglo-Catholic ritualists in Victorian England, was on trial for heresy. He had caused particular outrage by claiming that Jesus Christ was visually present in the Eucharist. This article explores the links between Bennett's writings and his campaign of rebuilding works at his parish church at Frome in Somerset. Bennett advanced a form of incarnational theology that was sufficiently radical that he can be said to have participated in, and even to have contributed to, the development of the visual expression of same-sex desire in later Victorian Britain. The cultural politics of the aestheticized body of Christ mean that incarnational theology can be considered in relation to the development of new forms of homoerotic expression. Bennett's visual and textual legacy suggests avenues for further research into the aesthetic aspects of Victorian religiosity and the religiosity of art.     

KARL POLANYI AND THE REALITY OF SOCIETY

This essay reconsiders Karl Polanyi's famous thesis about the “embeddedness” of the economy through an examination of two recent books: For a New West, a collection of previously unavailable essays by Polanyi, and Fred Block and Margaret R. Somers's The Power of Market Fundamentalism: Karl Polanyi's Critique. The guiding thread of this analysis is the claim that a constant in Polanyi's thought was his belief in what he called “the reality of society,” that is, that society exists as a social fact over and above the individuals that constitute it. The essay begins by tracing Polanyi's intellectual development, drawing primarily on the essays found in For a New West. Polanyi's quest to reconcile individual freedom with social solidarity led him first, in the years between the First and Second World Wars, to embrace liberal socialism, before his readings in anthropology persuaded him that traditional economies “embed” the economy in social relations and that the nineteenth‐century liberal project of a “disembedded” economy (through the so‐called free market) is a departure from this anthropological norm. The essay then examines and questions Block and Somers's claim that Polanyi maintained that the economy is always “already embedded,” arguing notably that Polanyi believed that the advent of market society entailed an economy that was actually disembedded from social relations, not merely one that was re‐embedded in an alternative set of institutions.     

Secularism Meets Coloniality: Mariategui's Andean Political Theology

This article seeks to clarify the link between Mariategui's political theology and his critique of modern-secular-coloniality. I argue that understanding the place and the significance of Mariategui's critique of secularism/colonialism helps us grasp the fuller extent of Mariategui's thought, a pioneering critic of modernity in the early twentieth century who keenly understood the limits of modern-liberal framework for analyzing the political problems of Latin America. Mariategui's reading of Marx and revolution raises important challenges to various forms of twenty-first-century political theologies that tackle modernity from within Western liberal modernity (postmodern theories and philosophies). Mariategui offers important insights not only for critics of the secular and modernity who fail to attest to the important question of coloniality from which secularism/modernity must be disentangled, but also for critics of colonialism/coloniality who fail to view religion as the key fabric of coloniality.     

William Temple: Christianity and the Life of Fellowship

Abstract

William Temple is best known for his contribution to the forging of a social consensus that resulted in the foundation of the post-war British welfare state following his untimely death in 1944 after only two years as Archbishop of Canterbury. Widely regarded as the most theologically gifted holder of that office since Anselm, his pioneering contribution to the elucidation of a methodology for Christian social ethics which emphasized the role of ‘Principles’ that should inform Christian social action and reflection reinvigorated the Church of his generation in the task of bringing to bear the Christian message on social problems. What is less well appreciated is how he was not only the spokesperson for the most advanced Christian witness in the inter-war years, but that he also provided a basis for Christian ethics that brought together the strengths of the Anglican incarnational theology stemming from F. D. Maurice with the British tradition of philosophical social idealism. Often moving from the circumference to the centre, he sought to relate philosophical questions and insights to the richness of the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. He was as at home in this task as he was in leading a mission on a Blackpool beach and the British public loved him for it. He was, as Winston Churchill said at the time of his elevation to Canterbury, "the half-crown article in a penny bazaar."