Religion and the Collapse of Gladstone's First Government, 1870–1874

1982 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. P. Parry

Gladstone has not been well served by the historiographical tradition dominant for much of this century. It has disseminated an image of him that emphasizes little more than an undefined ‘reformism’ and a moralizing populism; this is as unhelpful and distorted as is the interpretation, emanating from the same source, of much of the rest of nineteenth-century politics. It is no longer enough to judge public figures of this period by the degree of their commitment to nebulous platitudes like ‘social reform’ or ‘progress’: historians have recently exposed the flimsy foundations that sustain the reputations of even those most frequently celebrated in these spheres. It is misleading to concentrate attention on the development of institutional reform, centralized government, trade union legislation, or welfare statutes for the poor; franchise extension apart, advances here were often provoked solely by bureaucratic agency or by the concern of philanthropic backbenchers, and contributed only occasionally to the major disputes of Victorian political society. If we are to shed light on the domestic issues of vital importance to contemporary politicians, we need a far more coherent account than is now available of financial, taxation and land policy on the one hand, and, on the other, of the main subject of this article, the role of religion in politics.

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Georgakopoulou ◽  
Maria Vasilaki

Abstract Drawing on our previous work on the role of small stories in social-mediatized engagements with the Greek socio-economic crisis (Georgakopoulou 2014, 2015), in this article, we set out to shed light on impoliteness on social media through the lens of small stories research. We explore how Facebook and YouTube commenters “bash” political leaders and perceived political opponents and attribute blame to them for the crisis, through comments that attest to specific links of doing impoliteness with storying the crisis. Bashing has been previously related to the affective reactions of participants in online comments on current affairs. In this case, we bring to the fore a salient combination in our data of (mainly on-record) impoliteness strategies for bashing politicians with specific narrating positions in stories about the crisis: the narrator as sufferer, as witness of suffering, and as spokesperson for collective suffering. We argue that in all these cases, on-record impoliteness is normally placed at the end of a small story and presented as legitimated and justified by the preceding account. We conclude with the implications of the association of impoliteness targeting public figures with social-mediatized processes of personalizing and constructing expertise on the basis of experience on the one hand and, on the other hand, of jointly (re)asserting moral order in political affairs.


Author(s):  
Clemena Antonova

This chapter begins from a simple observation, namely, that what has been called ‘the Russian religious renaissance of the twentieth century’ coincided in time with two important movements in the sphere of the visual arts. On the one hand, there was a sweeping revival of interest in the medieval icon at the beginning of the twentieth century, which left almost no sphere of cultural life untouched. On the other, in artistic terms, the whole period was largely defined by the advent of the Russian avant-garde. I would like to consider the junction at which these three developments overlapped, informed, influenced, even opposed and clashed with one another. According to the interpretation proposed here, it is the mixture and the coexistence of a revived Orthodoxy, a reawakened focus on the medieval artistic tradition, and the rise of avant-garde modernism that gave a unique flavour to early twentieth-century Russian culture. The debates on the function and the meaning of the icon in the period between the 1910s and the early 1920s ultimately suggested different answers to the problem of the role of religion in modernity.


2002 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-111
Author(s):  
Jerald D. Gort

AbstractAfter reflecting on the ambiguous role of religion in terms of violence, Jerald D. Gort in this article outlines, first, the conditions for true reconciliation among peoples (acknowledgement of Christian complicity; no cheap reconciliation; no utopian enthusiasm; no fatalistic view of human capacity); then, second, he outlines the initiatives ofthe World Council of Churches (WCC) toward justice and reconciliation in the world. Such initiatives involve the struggle against injustice on the one hand and a practice of the "wider ecumenism" (dialogue of histories, theologies, spiritualities, and life) on the other.


2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 819-827 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Hitzer ◽  
Joachim Schlör

This article introduces a special issue that investigates the place of religion in the spatial and cultural organization of west and east European cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Discussing different frameworks for a conceptualization of the role of religion within the urban context during the past two hundred years, it argues for adopting a broader perspective that takes into account the multiple and often conflicting processes and practices of religious modernization. Thus, it places particular emphasis on scrutinizing a space in between, that is to say, the area of contact between the outward influence on the spatial development of religious communities on the one hand and the inner workings of such communities on the other hand. Based on an 1880s debate over the way Jewish immigrants changed the religious landscape of New York Jewry as well as on the results of the following contributions, it supports a fresh look at the turn of the century as a period of intensified religious life and visibility within metropolises that contributed to the development of more “modern,” individualized forms of religious sociability and, in the same vein, fostered the emergence of modern urbanity.


2008 ◽  
pp. 5-10
Author(s):  
Alla Vadymivna Aristova

Domestic scholars interested in the study of socio-religious conflicts have a very difficult task. In the absence of their own theoretical tradition in the field of conflictology, the long domination of ideological stereotypes and illusions about the role of religion in society, and in the context of the uniqueness of those socio-religious processes that exploded in the 90s of the last century, the researchers found themselves in a real way. On the one hand, the achievements of Western conflictology had just begun to flow into scientific circulation and were still waiting for its processing (besides, in principle, it could not be automatically transferred to the domestic soil), on the other - for the emergence of their own thorough conflictological intelligence it took some time. , for tendencies of development of religious relations, of course, are viewed only with the run of historical events.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-48
Author(s):  
György Fogarasi

Abstract The 18th-century notion of the picturesque is somewhat lesser known as compared to the more celebrated categories of the beautiful and the sublime, even though it may not only help us critically reflect upon modern perceptions of the landscape, but it may also provide us a unique way to link the field of aesthetic speculation with questions of technology and economy. The article will focus on two of the major theoreticians of the picturesque (William Gilpin and Uvedale Price) and will examine their ideas in relation to Edmund Burke’s aesthetics on the one hand, and contemporary tendencies in landscape gardening (as represented by Lancelot “Capability” Brown and Humphry Repton) on the other. Such an investigation may shed light on the multiple shifts in the perception of nature and the sense of naturalness during the long 18th century, as well as on the pictorial and theatrical aspects of landscape design. But examples of the Claude glass, the ha-ha, and Humphry Repton’s Red Books may also indicate the role of technological innovations and economic interests, and thereby the relevancy of the very discourse of the picturesque to more modern or even postmodern artistic, cultural, and medial developments.


Author(s):  
Mohamad Latief ◽  
Mifedwil Jandra

This research aims at analyzing political secularism in Indonesia and most specifically dealing with the recurrent polemic upon the relationship between Islam and State. The research initially seeks to describe the political situation of the country where the formalistic and substantives debate, especially on their distinctive approach to stipulate the proper role of religion on the country’s politic, could be witnessed. The description, however, will deal more on the latter political paradigm which is increasingly grasping an impressive preference from numbers of political individuals and institutions particularly when they come to discuss Islamic tenets and their application within the context of a pluralistic society like Indonesia. Using normative and socio-historical approaches, the paper argues that this political preference, despite its convincing successes in Islamizing the country’s politic, still suffers from numbers of defects that finally raise our apprehension. These defects summarily provide proofs to the questioned commitment of the substantive to the Islamic political values as a whole; the one which reveals an agreed separation of the state and religion; the one of secularism.Keywords; Formalistic, Substantive, Secularism, Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa, Partai Amanat Nasional. AbstractThis research aims at analyzing political secularism in Indonesia and most specifically dealing with the recurrent polemic upon the relationship between Islam and State. The research initially seeks to describe the political situation of the country where the formalistic and substantives debate, especially on their distinctive approach to stipulate the proper role of religion on the country’s politic, could be witnessed. The description, however, will deal more on the latter political paradigm which is increasingly grasping an impressive preference from numbers of political individuals and institutions particularly when they come to discuss Islamic tenets and their application within the context of a pluralistic society like Indonesia. Using normative and socio-historical approaches, the paper argues that this political preference, despite its convincing successes in Islamizing the country’s politic, still suffers from numbers of defects that finally raise our apprehension. These defects summarily provide proofs to the questioned commitment of the substantive to the Islamic political values as a whole; the one which reveals an agreed separation of the state and religion; the one of secularism.Keywords; Formalistic, Substantive, Secularism, Partai Kebangkitan Bangsa, Partai Amanat Nasional.


Author(s):  
Todd H. Weir ◽  
Udi Greenberg

This chapter argues that the role of religion in the political and social dynamics of the Weimar Republic was determined by two axes of confessional conflict. Alongside the Catholic–Protestant antagonism, there were also significant tensions between secularism and Christianity. Both axes contributed to the formation of different social milieus during the Kaiserreich and supported their continued articulation during the Weimar Republic. The chapter explores developments within the milieus, such as the significant growth and radicalization of freethought within the socialist and communist parties, as well as the shifting relationships between them, which created a fractured and complex set of political struggles, compromises, and alliances. The republic was bookended by efforts to overcome confessional divides in Germany through revolutionary means, on the one hand through the aborted attempt to fully secularize the German state in 1918 and, on the other, the campaign by the National Socialists to win Christian support by calling for ‘positive Christianity’ to heal Germany’s confessional divide by unifying Protestants and Catholics and destroying secularism.


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trish Morgan

This article reflects on a body of academic and practice-based work in the contexts of praxis. It asserts that in the face of systemic issues pertaining to ecosystem crisis, multidisciplinary approaches are required, which also enable the agency of the researcher to continue their work in challenging circumstances. In reflecting on the work conducted, the article aims to offer an insight into multiple ways in which knowledge about ecosystem distress can be communicated to multiple audiences. Furthermore, in providing a reflexive account of an ecological sound art project titled The Miracle of the One Thing, the article aims to shed light on the role of practice-based approaches in communicating ecosystem distress. It implicitly offers an alternative to the ‘ocularcentrism’ of the visual turn. It questions the assumption that communication about ecosystem crisis is necessarily visual or written, and places the role of sonic practices to the fore.


2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-167
Author(s):  
Kim Knibbe

This article discusses the process of doing fieldwork on the role of religion in moral orientation and then writing about it as a series of small betrayals. During the research it became clear that to gain insight into the ways in which moral worlds are constructed and the place of religious institutions and their representatives in these moral worlds, it was very important to understand how individual "shameful" secrets were produced. Furthermore, it was through gossip that I became familiar with the ways people related to the church as an institution with a moral discourse, and with its representatives, the local parish priests. Both in sociology and in anthropology, gossip is seen as a way of creating a shared moral universe. This article examines the ways in which the researcher becomes part of social processes through the sharing of secrets and gossip, and the ethical difficulties that arise from this: on the one hand, it seems imperative not to betray secrets, not to repeat gossip, not to betray the atmosphere of complicity surrounding this. On the other hand, not analyzing how individual secrets are produced through social and cultural processes and ignoring the role of gossip meant leaving out some of the most significant data. Furthermore, it shows that by paying attention to the ways in which gossip and secrets circulate, one can go beyond the “case study” approach that limits much qualitative research on religion.


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