Confronting Political Religion with Divine Religion: Christian Strategies of Re-Evangelization in the 1930s

Abstract

Western Christianity is currently engaged in a debate on religious pluralism, postmodernity and re-evangelization. This paper argues that the contours of this debate were already visible between the two world wars when Nazism (the ‘new Mohammedism’ as some Christian observers termed it) tried to take over the place Christianity was vacating. The defeat of this ‘political religion’ does not mean the victory of Christianity.     

In Search of the Authentic Nation: Landscape and National Identity in Canada and Switzerland

Abstract. While the study of nationalism and national identity has flourished in the last decade, little attention has been devoted to the conditions under which natural environments acquire significance in definitions of nationhood. This article examines the identity-forming role of landscape depictions in two polyethnic nation-states: Canada and Switzerland. Two types of geographical national identity are identified. The first – what we call the ‘nationalisation of nature’– portrays zarticular landscapes as expressions of national authenticity. The second pattern – what we refer to as the ‘naturalisation of the nation’– rests upon a notion of geographical determinism that depicts specific landscapes as forces capable of determining national identity. The authors offer two reasons why the second pattern came to prevail in the cases under consideration: (1) the affinity between wild landscape and the Romantic ideal of pure, rugged nature, and (2) a divergence between the nationalist ideal of ethnic homogeneity and the polyethnic composition of the two societies under consideration.     

Nationalism,Ethnicity and Religion: Fundamental Conflicts and the Politics of Identity in Tanzania

Abstract. This article explores the competing relations between ethnic, religious and racial identities in contemporary Tanzania at a time of rapid socioeconomic change and in the face of the declining authority and legitimacy of the state. During nearly four decades of one-party rule the state has pursued policies - educational, linguistic, developmental, etc. - aimed at constructing a secular national identity capable of uniting diverse social groups under the banner of African socialism. However, economic retrenchment in the 1980s and political liberalisation in the 1990s has contributed directly to a series of upheavals leading many Tanzanians to redefine the structures of common difference and to a fracturing of national identity. This article seeks to understand the reasons for the upsurge of conflict and cultural fragmentation in the 1990s.     

Religion and the US Presidency: Politics,the Media,and Religious Identity

Abstract

The relationship between religion and the presidency impacts both the viability of candidates and the manner in which decisions are made in the voting booth. Today we are living in culture where religion is front and center in politics. This article examines the role of religion in political discourse with special attention to the 2012 presidential election. It focuses on the manner in which religion and politics have become inextricably interwoven in the past sixty years. It begins by establishing the role of religion in the broader political arena. The article then turns to the manner in which religious identity and participation influence voting patterns, and how religious affiliation shapes the office of the presidency. The conclusion offers some reflections on the future of religion in presidential politics, an issue that will continue to be a significant factor in how and why voters support and marginalize particular candidates.     

Religion And Technological Innovation: The steamboat in 1840s France

Summary

Looking beyond the reaction to and the discourses surrounding inventions, it may appear incongruous to link religion with technological innovation, especially considering the underlying religious motivations of the inventive act. Steamship propulsion and the search for an alternative to the paddle wheel in 1840s France implicates three inventors (Frédéric Sauvage, Augustin Normand, Achille de Jouffroy d'Abbans) and three inventions (the continuous propeller, the divided propeller, the flipper apparatus); only Normand's propeller would have a vertiable future. This contest also entails three different types of religious temperaments: a Romantic religiosity, a “bourgeois” or private Catholicism; and a clerical‐legitimist militancy. The question which will be considered here is: were these inventors influenced by the strength of their religious convictions; and if so, how did this affect their scientific reasoning ?