Japheth's World: The Rise of Secularism and the Revival of Religion Today

This essay explores what it means to say that we live today in “a secular age.” A distinction between two kinds of secularism is introduced and the proposal is made that the secularity that characterises our age belongs to a distinctively Graeco-Christian heritage. This proposal is elaborated and developed in the context of the Nietzschean pronouncement of the death of God and against the background of the decline in theodicial conceptions of history. However, rather than see these issues as connected to a growing nihilism in European society or in terms of a movement towards a widespread atheism, they are interpreted, in many respects optimistically, in terms of the awakening and ongoing movement of a distinctively democratic desire.     

Sword,Priest and Conversion: On Religion and Apostasy in South Slav Literature in the Period of National Revival

Abstract

This article examines the works of four writers of Croatian, Slovene, Serbian and Bosniak literature in the period of National Revival, in their literary, historical and discursive contexts: Pre?ern’s Krst pri Savici, Ma?urani?’s Smrt Smail-age ?engi?a, Njego?’s Gorski vijenac and Ba?agi?’s Abdullah Pa?a. Three of the four authors were also statesmen, and all four are considered canonical national writers. There is a striking similarity between their otherwise different works, resulting from speeches by priests who either demand and justify conversion, or vehemently oppose it and call for vengeance. In all four works, the enemy is not a foreign conqueror, but an apostate who sides with the conqueror by accepting his faith. Although in all four works the values of the epic and heroic world are pronounced dead, epic action — a ’sword’ — is still very much alive. Though the central act of conversion is accompanied by religious symbolism which gives rise to the impression of a clash of religions, in all four works conversion does not have a religious meaning, it is purely political.     

Visions of Albion: ancient landscapes,Glastonbury and alternative forms of nationalism

Nationalist visions are often connected with a cult of the land. This article considers some of the cultural‐nationalist ideas linked to the Somerset town of Glastonbury, a prominent New Age centre. It discusses the legacy of British pastoralism as shown in the work of H. V. Morton and Cecil Sharp. It considers the evolution of an English–Celtic tradition, drawing on the legacy of the Arthurian legend, but being re‐formulated in the late twentieth century as a vehicle for New Age conceptions of British society. The article concludes by evaluating the political values inherent in the New Age.     

Sociology,Religion, and Historians Revisited: Towards an Historical Sociology of Religion

Abstract

Two great movie directors were both born in 1930. One of them, Jean-Luc Godard, revolutionized filmmaking during his 30s and declined in creativity thereafter. In contrast, Clint Eastwood did not direct his first movie until he had passed the age of 40 and did not emerge as an important director until after he was 60. This dramatic difference in life cycles was not accidental, but was a characteristic example of a pattern that has been identified across the arts: Godard was a conceptual innovator who peaked early, whereas Eastwood was an experimental innovator who improved with experience. This article examines the goals, methods, and creative life cycles of Godard, Eastwood, and eight other directors who were the most important filmmakers of the second half of the twentieth century. Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen Spielberg, and François Truffaut join Godard in the category of conceptual young geniuses, while Woody Allen, Robert Altman, John Cassavetes, and Martin Scorsese are classed with Eastwood as experimental old masters. In an era in which conceptual innovators have dominated a number of artistic activities, the strong representation of experimental innovators among the greatest film directors is an interesting phenomenon.     

Religion, Policy, and Secrecy: The Latter Day Saints and Masons

On a vanished secret order: "Had politics, as in Masonry, been its main object, it would have held on with tenacity to its principles, as to the threads of life, and, disregarding its departure from sound morals, or patriotism, would still have contended, with the infatuation of a Mormonite, for the enjoyment, in secret, of that which in the eye of the public would overwhelm its members in confusions.""A Traveller in the United States", A Ritual and Illustrations of Free-Masonry and the Orange and Odd Fellows' Societies, Accompanied by Numerous Engravings, and a Key to the Phi Beta Kappa , S. Thrne, Devon (Shebbear, near Hatherleigh, England), 1835, 251.     

Challenge,Decline and Revival: The Fortunes of Pacifism in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Newcastle

In view of the economic and to some extent the military interests of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Newcastle, one would not expect to find a significant pacifist presence there. Between 1817 and 1869, however, the town had an active branch of the national Peace Society, and in Robert Spence Watson (1837–1911) it boasted one of England’s leading pacifists in the decades prior to the First World War. After dwelling on the last twenty years of the life of the Newcastle branch of the Peace Society (when it was subjected to greater challenges than it had been in the first part of its existence), the paper points out that, despite the branch’s closure, Newcastle pacifists won a rare local victory over their opponents in a public debate of 1870 and the Franco-Prussian War marked the starting-point of the many peace-related activities of Spence Watson. Whilst confirming scholars’ general impression that the impetus underlying nineteenth-century British pacifism came largely from Nonconformity (especially from Quakers), the paper claims that because the Newcastle brand of pacifism was radical, and because Spence Watson took the local variety of pacifism on to the national stage, tracing the fortunes of the doctrine in the principal city of north-east England is of general as well as provincial significance.     

King Edgar,Wales and Chester: The Welsh Dimension in the Ceremony of 973

Abstract

This article addresses two related aspects of King Edgar's visit to Chester — why he went there and how he got there. Interpretations of its purpose have generally been based upon English sources and have paid less attention to Welsh evidence: this article attempts an alternative perspective. The first of the two aspects is a stage in the development of the ‘Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’ expressed in the coronation at Bath and a tenth-century durbar at Chester when the might of the King of all England was pronounced to the outside world. The second, which was linked to that and specifically directed at the North-West, was a determined attempt to define and strengthen the north-western frontier of the extended kingdom and tighten Edgar's grip upon the northern Welsh princes whose constant infighting presented an opportunity for Norse and/or Irish incursions. His actions became an economic as well as a military necessity, to maintain the English grasp on North Wales and to protect the important trading links between Chester and Ireland.