‘Reckless youth’. Cardinal Maffi and Fascism (1919–31)

The article focuses on Cardinal Pietro Maffi's attitude towards Fascism. As one of the mightiest princes of the Church and a well-known patriot, the Archbishop of Pisa enthusiastically supported the war effort in 1915–18. Concerned by the spread of strikes and social disorders after the victory, he saw Fascism as a bulwark against socialism and tried to make an alliance through celebrations of the ‘heroic’ memory of the Great War together with the Black Shirts. Maffi's strategy seemed to work: with a few exceptions the alliance remained effective and became official with signing of the Lateran Pacts of 1929. Consequently, Cardinal Maffi made a significant contribution to the success of the secular religion of the Fatherland preached by Fascism which shortly after his death in March 1931 would become a major source of tension between the regime and the Church.     

Keeping the Spiritual Home Fires Burning: Religious Belonging in Britain during the First World War

The religious impact of the First World War on the home front in Britain is assessed in terms of churchgoing and church membership and affiliation. Church attendance rose briefly at the start of the war but fell away thereafter in the Protestant tradition, accelerating a pre-existing trend, which was not reversed after 1918. The disruption caused by the war to the everyday life of organized religion probably accounts for the decrease, rather more than loss of faith. Church membership also declined during the war in the Anglican and mainstream Free Churches, albeit not for other denominations and faiths, but it temporarily revived after the war. This was not the case for non-member adherents and Sunday scholars whose reduction was more continuous.     

美国华人教会的社会功能初探

近年来,美国华人基督教教会组织发展迅速,其在帮助华人新移民群体,整合华人社会资源等方面的作用已经超越了传统华人社团。本文依据实地考察并结合文献研究,探索美国华人教会组织的多方面社会功能。作者认为,华人教会在华人社会中的作用及其影响值得关注。     

十九世纪末鲁西南地方权力结构与民教冲突

19世纪末鲁西南地区频繁发生的教案、民教冲突与地方权力结构有着极其密切的关系,正是楔入乡土社会的教会势力破坏了地方上的权力结构,并与传统的地方权力结构分享乡土社会的控制民众权,使得以官绅为代表的地方权力阶层权势和利益受损,才导致了由地方权力阶层领导的反洋教运动。因此与其说双方的冲突是一种侵略与反侵略斗争或宗教与文化的冲突,不如说是双方利益和权力的争夺保卫战。     

晚清直隶教案诱因分析--以1860年11月～1898年10月为中心

关于教案的发源,目前学术界大致有四种观点：1．侵略说;2．中西化冲突说;3．三重危机说;4．多种因素说。①笔以为,笼统地将晚清近两千起②教案发生的原因归结为列强侵略或两种异质化之间的冲突等都未免失之简单,应作具体分析。在晚清直隶,引发教案的原因是多方面的,主要有：由传教士查还旧址、租买房产以及民教互争公产地亩引发的地产之争;摊派各种庙会和修庙钱引发纷争;细故口角争殴;教堂或传教士、教民遭劫窃引发;反教谣言、揭贴引发;民教双方由相互猜疑进而捏情上控引发教案等。     

Travelling images and projected representations

This article examines how Mormons and Mormonism were represented in Norway in the period before and after their arrival as missionaries, c. 1840–1860. The religion came into existence in a US context of religious pluralism, where the idea, though not necessarily the practice, of religious freedom was central. It has been argued that the persecution of Mormons in the United States had to be coined in non-religious terms, and the religion represented as a fraud and orientalised as an un-American threat to the republic. The Norwegian religious context differed significantly as heterodoxy was opposed and only hesitantly tolerated in a limited scale. The article demonstrates how inimical images of Mormonism present in the United States were imported to Norway, and to a large part found resonance in inherent stereotypes of religious otherness already present. As Mormons changed from being an occidental abstraction to a domestic ‘problem’ in around 1850, the discourse of Mormonism as religious otherness was more openly framed within religious terms.     

Physico‐Chemical Characterization of Pigments and Binders of Murals in a Church in Ethiopia

Here, we report the physico‐chemical characterization of wall paintings from the Petros and Paulos church in Ethiopia. This work represents the first technical study of paintings located in Ethiopia, rather than paintings in museum collections outside the country, using diverse analytical techniques. In situ examination with a portable X‐ray fluorescence spectrometer (pXRF) was followed by analysis of samples using optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy (SEM/EDS), micro‐Raman spectroscopy (MRS), attenuated total reflection – Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR‐FT–IR), X‐ray powder diffraction (XRD) and pyrolysis gas chromatography – mass spectrometry (Py‐GC/MS). The paint stratigraphy, the compositions of the support material, the preparatory and painting layers were studied, as well as the morphology of the pigment particles. The results revealed the use of earth pigments and carbon black. The preparatory layer was uncommon; composed of dolomite, clay rich in clinochlore and sand, in contrast to the more common gypsum and calcite. The binder and the stratigraphic analyses suggested a distempera technique.     

Church, Space and Conflict: Religious Co-Existence and Political Communication in Seventeenth-Century Switzerland

This article sets out to explore how a local quarrel in theGrafschaft of Baden, a bi-confessional Swiss county, occasionedby efforts to install a separate font for Protestant parishioners,activated larger constitutional and confessional tensions betweenthe Catholic and Protestant cantons of the Swiss Confederation.The article reconstructs the lengthy political negotiationscaused by the rearrangement of church space since the Landfriedenof 1531: this treaty had enshrined bi-confessionalism in theSwiss Confederation and had established the duties and rightsof both confessions, although to the disadvantage of the ReformedProtestants. It had also transformed the consecrated space ofthe church into a stage for political action by the cantons.From 1531 onwards, changes in religious belief and observancewere subject to the will of the supreme governing authority.The article shows that local conflicts over the arrangementand furnishing of certain church spaces can give us fascinatinginsights into political practice, the establishment of socialorder and the handling of denominational differences withinthe Swiss Confederation. It attempts to contribute to our understandingof early modern political history by using concepts from culturalhistory and communication theory in which politics is closelylinked to social and confessional processes generating meaningand order.     

A State Within the State: The Inquisition in Enlightenment Thought

ABSTRACT

Enlightenment thinkers wrote many pages against the Inquisition. In particular, they widely criticized the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions, which they regarded as the epitomes of cruelty and fanaticism. Both inquisitions were established at royal request and remained subjected to the authority of the kings until they were abolished at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Indeed, therein the kings nominated the grand inquisitors, who were invested with civil jurisdiction for reasons that were at least as much political as religious. However, Enlightenment writers almost always portrayed the Inquisition as the ultimate example of the many ills derived from clerical authority, ecclesiastical autonomy and monastic despotism. Kings and civil magistrates were, in fact, usually depicted as victims of inquisitorial power. This common portrayal of the Inquisition reveals that the Enlightenment idea of toleration was essentially constructed for reducing the power of churches to disturb public peace and challenge civil authority. Thus, this idea of toleration was in effect less capable of denouncing political intolerance, let alone of promoting the separation of church and state.     

The ‘secular’ settlement and Australian political thought

This paper challenges the tendency among contemporary historians and political scientists to read secularism and religion in Australian political history in binary terms. It is argued that this framework is anachronistic, creating a barrier to a proper appreciation of religion in Australian political history. In keeping with much British Enlightenment thinking, religion through much of Australia’s history was deemed to have great social utility and its promotion was of central secular significance. This understanding framed the education debates of the second half of the nineteenth century as well as the social welfare reforms and institution building around the Federation period. Such developments cast doubt on claims that secularism of an exclusionary kind is a key element of the now widely invoked category of the Australian settlement.