Preaching the Cross: Liturgy and Crusade Propaganda

Abstract

This article is an exploration of preaching on the cross very broadly from the time of Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo onwards. After a brief examination of some early medieval examples, the discussion focuses on Rabanus Maurus and a sermon attributed to Odilo of Cluny. The discussion then centres on the High Middle Ages: sermons by Bernard of Clairvaux, Alan of Lille, an anonymous Cistercian abbot, the vita of Marie d'Oignies, Alexander of Ashby, and model sermons by Humbert of Romans. Before concluding, it explores opposition to the cross, as expressed in inquisitorial documents. The essay also includes crusade preaching, as well as liturgical preaching on the cross or involving the cross, and sermons on the cross that could serve for more than one purpose.     

美国进步运动研究评述

从研究方法的角度看,国外主要是美国学界关于进步运动的研究大体可分为专题研究、综合研究与比较研究。特别是在20世纪70年代以来,进步运动研究超越民族国家范畴,在跨国比较研究方面取得了重大进展。从构成进步运动的主体看,19世纪末20世纪初的美国进步运动是由复杂多样的改革运动组成的,得到不同的变革力量的倡导与支持。作为改革的进步派不能简单地以阶级或阶层划线,他们因不同的问题忽而协同作战,转而又互为敌寇或各自为战。尽管进步运动具有多样性,但并不排斥其一致性或共性的存在。从进步运动的目标与内容看,它是一场新的历史条件下重建民主与资本主义的社会政治运动,而作为支持进步运动的意识形态,即进步主义,究其实质,是属于自由主义范畴的。作为全国范围内的首次变革运动,进步运动奠定了现代美国政治、经济与文化的基础。     

美国宗教民族主义的历史省察

宗教民族主义是指一个国家的民族宗教与民族主义结合在一起并为民族利益服务。美国宗教民族主义是美国政治制度的力量源泉,它使美国的国际行为神圣化。在美国民族形成过程中,宗教曾起到民族整合的作用,美国依靠宗教皈依来自世界各地的移民,同时,也利用宗教捧除其他化对美国的冲击;在美国领土扩张过程中,宗教理念推动了美国的西进运动和海外扩张;在国际难民解救问题上,美国政府和宗教界人士以宗教关怀为手段体现美国政府在国际上的作用和地位;在20世纪的美国外交中,美国利用宗教积极参加反对共产主义运动,成为反共十字军中的重要成员。美国的历史就是宗教与民族主义相互融合、相互配合、相互作用的历史。     

Eugenics as Indian removal: sociohistorical processes and the de(con)struction of American Indians in the southeast

Although research on the history of the eugenics movement in the United States is legion, its impact on state policies that identified and defined American Indians has yet to be fully addressed. The exhibit, Our Lives: Comtemporary Life and Identities (ongoing until September 21, 2014) at the National Museum of the American Indian provides a provocative vehicle for examining how eugenics-informed public policy during the first quarter of the twentieth century served to "remove" from official records Native peoples throughout the Southeast. One century after Indian Removal of the antebellum era, Native peoples in the American Southeast provide an important but often overlooked example of how racial policies, this time rooted in eugenics, effected a documentary erasure of Native peoples and communities.     

"Hopelessly entangled in Nordic pre-suppositions": Catholic participation in the American Eugenics Society in the 1920s

While American Catholics stand out as some of the few voices of cultural opposition to the eugenics movement in the United States, Catholics and eugenicists actively engaged in conversational exchanges during the late 1920s. In association with the Committee on Cooperation with Clergymen of the American Eugenics Society, John A. Ryan and John Montgomery Cooper engaged in a process that Sander Gilman and Nancy Leys Stepan call "recontextualization," whereby they challenged the social and scientific basis for eugenics policy initiatives while constantly urging American eugenicists to rid their movement of racial and class prejudice. In the process, they participated in a revealing debate on immigration restriction, charity, racial hierarchies, feminism, birth control, and sterilization that points to both the instances of convergence and divergence of Catholic and eugenic visions for the national community.     

20世纪90年代的美国环境保护运动和环境保护主义

1970年4月22日,当美国历史上的第一个“地球日”示威发生时,有人曾骂它是“自十字军东征以来的一次由一群乌合之众支持的马戏表演”,是“生态狂”;然而,到了1990年,在“地球日”20周年的时候,4月22日已成了一个国际性的节日。这一天世界上有140多个国家举行了各种形式的纪念性活动。在美国,仅纽约一地,就有20万人参加了在中央公园的庆祝集会。1970年的地球日,被公认是在1962年卡森的《寂静的春天》拉开序幕之后,美国环境保护运动走向高潮的一个标志。