Globalising the US Christian Right: Transnational Interchange During the Cold War

This article investigates the Cold War era efforts by self-identified Christian fundamentalists in the United States to export their political agendas and their methodologies of exerting political pressure to the rest of the world. It focuses on the International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC), the era's only worldwide interdenominational association by Protestant Christian fundamentalists, founded by North Americans in 1948 but functioning through autonomous regional and national councils on all continents. The article shows that US fundamentalists affiliated with the ICCC were systematically trying to create a global Christian Right from the beginning of the Cold War, but that their initial agenda – anticommunism coupled with free enterprise capitalism – failed to gain widespread support among their allies abroad. Central in moving both the US and the global fundamentalist community into the politics of morality instead were the ICCC's Northern and Western Europeans, who first had to grapple with and suffered defeats over the moral issues that came to cohere the modern Christian Right – abortion, gay rights, religious instruction versus sex education in schools, free circulation of pornography and threats to the traditional marriage. Through a synthesis of originally European agendas and US-derived methods this politics of morality was significantly globalised already during the Cold War.     

An engineering career as industrial mission: Jack Keiser in post-war Britain

ABSTRACT

British mechanical engineer Jack Keiser’s postwar career in industrial education was simultaneously a career in justice work and Christian industrial mission. This paper examines the Christian critique of industry Keiser developed early in his career, as he transitioned in 1949–1950 into his life’s work in firm-based industrial education, and asks how historians of technology might interpret a critique that characterized industry in hyperbolic terms as enslaving or demonic. Keiser’s was part of an international critique connected to three important post-war Christian institutions: Student Christian Movement, the Industrial Mission Movement, and the World Council of Churches. He engaged with justice at both an intimate and a cosmic level, intimately through face-to-face relationships with apprentices and trainees under his supervision, and cosmically by engaging with the biblical prophets through whom God called for justice.     

“Wild Oats or Acorns?” Social Purity,Sexual Politics and the Response of the Late‐Victorian Church

The late‐Victorian social purity movement heralded a new phase in the history of moral regulation, generating significant levels of Anglican and Nonconformist support for male chastity and the elimination of the sexual double standard. Historians have so far highlighted the more repressive aspects of these campaigns such as their willingness to use criminal legislation and censorship to elevate standards of public morality. This article rehabilitates the discourse and activity of churchwomen — not least Ellice Hopkins — who were prominent campaigners for social purity. Women purity workers exerted enormous pressure upon the professional hierarchies of church and chapel, actively reworking Christian readings of the body so as to bring the moral influence of the churches to bear upon public opinion. In so doing they brought about a significant transformation in clerical attitudes that regarded discussions of sex as beyond the boundaries of civilized discourse and led in the promotion of a regulatory, but nonetheless highly public, religious discourse on sexuality.     

Teaching Political Theology as Ministerial Formation

Abstract

This article reflects on the experience of teaching political theology to undergraduate students training for public ministry in the Anglican, Methodist, URC and Roman Catholic traditions in a British context. Whilst welcoming the increased profile of political theology within ministerial training this article challenges the continuing tendency towards dualist and instrumental accounts and poses three areas for further reflection and resourcing: relationship between practical, political theologies and theology of action, the need for increased resourcing of Churches as technologies of citizenship; and further reflection on how the nature and contribution of Catholic political theology might be conceived.     

Denmark and the first world war

This article analyses general opinions of Scandinavia held by British policymakers in the post‐war period, before going on to examine a particular instance of Britain's attempts to copy ‘Scandinavian policies’ in the early 1960s. Given the generally positive views held as concerned Scandinavian economic and social policies at the time, and the influence those countries wielded in international economic and social policy networks, such attempts were only to be expected. During the 1959–1964 Parliament, the British Conservative Government attempted to adopt housing policies from Scandinavia, in particular housing co‐operatives subsidized by the state, but organized by owners and tenants. They failed to entrench such new ideas in the British policy system, for four reasons. The first was the very strong institutional position of municipal housing and owner‐occupation; the second was the taxation system, which proved impervious to change; the third was the obviously politically‐motivated attempt to change British behaviour in a very short time‐frame; and the fourth, crucially, was the lack of knowledge as to how Scandinavian housing markets actually worked. This failed experiment demonstrates the allure, but also the superficiality and some of the dangers, of direct policy transfer between nations.     

论英国新马克思主义学派的福利观

作为英国在福利思想方面的一个重要流派,新马克思主义学派对20世纪英国国家福利的产生和发展、战后国家性质的变化、国家权威的来源、国家与政府的关系、国家福利的功能和目的等问题作了较系统的分析,为战后英国福利国家的发展奠定了一定的理论基础。该学派基于马克思对资本主义国家的分析,在福利思想方面又分为体系决定论和相对自治论。相比较而言,相对自治论更符合战后英国政治、经济和社会发展的现实。     

Religion and Violence: A Challenge to the Unity of the Churches

Abstract

The article explores the relationship between religion and violence—both in the role religion has played in overcoming violence and in sometimes being at the heart of violence. Recent Indian history of religiously fuelled violence is the case study in this article. Additionally, the history of Christianity is dotted with violence—imperialism and colonialism have been justified by some historians. This should be the basis for a challenge to the imperial and implicitly ‘Christian’ designs that accompany the present war against Iraq.

The Bible and Christian theology contain violent images. There is ambiguity in defining violence, because sometimes it is difficult to name the more subtle forms of violence. The authority of the Church is questioned as it has sometimes been silent about the violence within its own life.

The Churches need to engage in intra-Christian dialogue so as to mutually focus on the ministry of reconciliation and healing. The Churches need also to engage in inter-religious dialogue, recognizing a common spirituality of non-violence present in all religions.     

‘I Just Like to Kill Things’: Women,Men and the Gender of Sport Hunting in the United States, 1940–1973

This paper examines women's place in sportsmen's magazines and their role in the creation of sport hunting's image in the post‐war United States. It argues that sport‐hunting women were not challenging post‐war constructions of femininity or domesticity. Nevertheless, sportsmen attacked women's attempts to construe hunting as heterosocial recreation, fearing that they would undermine hunting's cultural significance. Instead, the dominant, male‐authored discourse connected authentic hunting to a new post‐war formulation of masculinity that revolved around militarism and the emotional bonds between men developed through battlefield experiences. This analysis takes seriously both men's and women's interpretations of a cultural practice historically associated with one sex, in order to reveal how gender identities are constructed and contested.     

Suffering,Vice, And Justice: Religious Imaginaries and Welfare Agencies in Post‐War Melbourne

Faith‐based welfare agencies vary considerably, dependent on the nature of their leadership, the inheritance of their services, and the niche that they are assigned by state policy in the mixed economy of welfare. Another dimension of their diversity can derive from the discursive structures of their faith. This article examines the theological inheritances that shaped how three key welfare agencies in post‐war Melbourne imagined what they were doing, as they drew on the diversity of teachings about the poor derived from the Catholic, Anglican, and Methodist traditions.     

“Moral Panic” or Pejorative Labelling? Rethinking the Mazengarb Inquiry into Underage Sex in the Hutt Valley in 1954

This article re‐examines the interpretation of widespread concern over significant underage sex in the Hutt Valley, Wellington, which resulted in a government inquiry in 1954. It challenges the typical “moral panic” interpretive lens concerning the inquiry, arguing that the term obscures more than it reveals. The term focuses on reaction to the Hutt Valley affair but fails to address sufficiently the causative question of why such concern existed in the first place. The “moral panic” framing of the Hutt Valley incidents has failed to give adequate recognize that the developments were early indicators of increasing societal shifts that threatened long‐held public views on sexuality; that manifest, societal, sexuality values changes in the next two decades showed that concerned people of 1954 were right within the framework of their worldview to have such concern; and that the so‐called “moral panic” concern of 1954 already existed prior to the Hutt Valley disclosures.     

WOMEN IN RELIEF WORK

This article suggests that it could be fruitful to approach women's employment in the context of the labour market rather than the household. In Finland until World War II, the public‐work schemes and relief work were the preferred policies concerning unemployed men and women. Women eligible to relief work were taken to work in mainly textiles in non‐residential workhouses. The difficulties faced in applying the ‘workfare’ policy to unemployed women paved the way for cash benefits in post‐war Finland. It is suggested that the Finnish case opens up a wider perspective on the relationship between the ideology of workfare and the rise and fall of the hegemony of wage labour.     

A Response to Tomás Halík

Abstract

The Churches were significant players in the debate surrounding what has been called Britain's "lost opportunity" in the 1940s and 50s to play a leading role in building a united Europe. This article focuses on Christian theological and historical assumptions about humanity as a universal community, the nation and the Church. It examines Christian discourse about the political dimension of these communities and the part that Christianity as a belief system should ideally play between them. It then outlines the "Christendom" narrative, which represented medieval Europe as a model for the future of Europe, as a partial realization of the ideal alignment of power and culture, which in its decay was the cause of international crisis. Finally, some of the points of tension between Christendom, British national identity, and a united Europe among Christians are discussed.     

Hugo von Hofmannsthal: The Symbol as Experience

Dreams and Discourses (1627) by Francisco de Quevedo is a Baroque satirical work composed by five dreamlike narrations that criticize the moral decadence of seventeenth-century Spanish society. Traditionally, it has been read as a conservative Catholic text that conveys an official view of truth and morality. This article attempts to question that reading by addressing the use of subversive strategies, such as wordplay and ambiguity. Through an analysis of the paratext, the narrative voices, and the satire of popular trades—e.g., bankers—the article sheds light on the text's self-erosion of established moral and epistemological values. It concludes that behind its apparent religious correctness, the work reflects on the fundamental opacity of language. Theoretically, Quevedo's satire is understood as a disseminatory artifact following Derrida in Dissemination.     

Women and Work after the Second World War: A Case Study of the Jute Industry, Circa 1945-1954

This article examines the attempts by the Dundee jute industryto recruit women workers in the years circa 1945–1954.It locates its discussion of these attempts in the literatureon the impact of the Second World War on the participation ofwomen in the British labour market more generally, and the forcesdetermining that participation. It stresses the peculiaritiesof jute as a traditional major employer of women operating invery specific market conditions, but suggests that this casestudy throws light on the broader argument about the impactof war and early post-war conditions on women's participationin paid work.     

Expanding the Australian Empire?: The Australian Council for the World Council of Churches,the Menzies Government and the New Hebrides in the late 1950s

In the late 1950s the Australian Council for the World Council of Churches (AC‐WCC) inspired primarily by the Presbyterian Church, undertook a concerted campaign to pressure the Australian government to assume a greater role in the affairs of the New Hebrides. The AC‐WCC wanted the Australian government to take over the United Kingdom's role in the administration of the Anglo‐French Condominium. It was motivated to undertake this campaign by the dismal social and economic conditions in the islands, the neglect of the British and French colonial authorities, and their failure to offer the indigenous people a way forward to self‐government. The high point of the campaign was a meeting between Robert Menzies, the Australian prime minister and a delegation from the AC‐WCC in early 1958. As a result of this meeting Australian ministers and officials, for the final time, gave extended consideration to expanding Australia's empire in the South Pacific to include the New Hebrides. This article examines the AC‐WCC's campaign, explores the Australian government's response, and analyses the outcome of this important episode in Australia's involvement in the colonial territories of the South Pacific.     

Mediating the Good Life: Prostitution and the Japanese Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1880s–1920s

This article examines how the Japanese Woman's Christian Temperance Union, in the name of promoting liberty and rights of women in their relations with men, constructed hierarchies to ascribe value to themselves through moral condemnation. The JWCTU used extramarital sex as a political issue to strengthen the position of the legal wife in the household as opposed to the concubine and prostitute. Their efforts to prohibit Japanese women from going abroad as prostitutes, while understood as an attempt to end a system of slavery that violated the inherent rights of Japanese womanhood, was actually a desire to regulate the behaviour of the poor. The JWCTU based its moral reform agenda on the importance of premarital chastity, strict monogamy and the obligation to work for the good of the nation. Its construction of prostitution as evil represents an important strand in the history of the relationship between prostitution and family as a socio‐political issue in modern Japan.     

Protecting the honour of the daughters of Eire: welfare policy for Irish female migrants to England, 1940–70

Across the middle decades of the twentieth century, approximately 500,000 people left Ireland for Britain. Around half were young, single females migrating alone. Drawing on archival material in Ireland and England, this paper analyses the ways in which Catholic and secular agencies became aware of female Irish migrants; and how they understood and responded to their needs. Catholic organisations focused on maintaining religious belief and practice as a means of avoiding social problems in migrants. Some female migrants, such as nurses, were considered exemplars of Catholic and Irish femininity. However, female sexuality was problematised when associated with single motherhood, prostitution and cohabitation. The Irish hierarchy expected to lead policy development for migrant welfare. The framing of female migrant social needs within a moral and religious discourse led to solutions prioritising moral welfare delivered by Catholic priests and volunteers. Both the Irish government and British institutions (state and voluntary) accepted the centrality of Catholicism to Irish identity and the right of the Catholic Church to lead welfare policy and provision for Irish female migrants. No alternative understanding of Irish women's needs within a secular framework emerged during this period. This meant that whilst the Irish hierarchy developed policy responses based on their assessment of need, other agencies, notably the British and Irish governments, did not consider any specific policy response for Irish women to be required.     

Castration of male sex offenders in the Nordic welfare state in the context of homosexuality and heteronormativity, 1930–1955

The eugenic legislation was a defining aspect in the development of the Nordic welfare state. While sterilization is a widely recognized method of restricting reproduction, another part of the legislation was the castration of male sex offenders for criminal-therapeutic purposes. This article discusses the conflicts arising from the castration of male criminals. Especially targeted were male criminals whose crimes could be traced back to a conflicted sexuality, including homosexuality and such vaguely termed conditions as hypersexuality and an abnormal sex drive. This article highlights the exclusive connection of sexual violence to male violence in the context of Nordic castration legislation. It is further argued that the decriminalization of homosexuality did not lead to sexual liberation but rather to much more harshly restricted sexuality through medicalization. The medicalization of homosexuality and the castration of men labelled as sexual offenders show how the conformity of the Nordic welfare state has tended to restrict sexuality with the help of the concept of heteronormativity.     

The United States, The United Nations and Iraq: 'Multilateralism of a kind'

Much is made of the need for any second war against Iraq (following Desert Storm of 1991) to be sanctioned by a resolution of the UN Security Council, approved necessarily by all five Permanent Members. Yet only two of the five, the USA and the UK, show any enthusiasm for renewed war in the Persian Gulf; and British policy is undeniably following rather than leading American actions on the diplomatic and military fronts. What are the sources of this American policy? Some critics say oil; the latest arguments of proponents invoke humanitarian concerns; somewhere between the two are those who desire ‘regime change’ to create the economic and political conditions in which so‐called western political, economic and social values can flourish. To understand the present crisis and its likely evolution this article examines American relations with Iraq in particular, the Persian Gulf more generally and the Middle East as a region since the Second World War. A study of these international relations combined with a critical approach to the history of American actions and attitudes towards the United Nations shows that the United States continues to pursue a diplomacy blending, as occasion suits, the traditional binaries of multilateralism and unilateralism—yet in the new world‐wide ‘war on terrorism’. The question remains whether the chosen means of fighting this war will inevitably lead to a pyrrhic victory for the United States and its ad hoc allies in the looming confrontation with Iraq.     

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."