‘Angels Seen Today’. The Theology of Modern Spiritualism and its Impact on Church of England Clergy, 1852–1939

2009 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 360-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgina Byrne
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Geographical Locations

In 1852 an American medium, Maria Hayden, crossed the Atlantic, landed in London and began offering séances in fashionable salons. From this point on, and certainly well into the twentieth century, spiritualism proved attractive to many. What spiritualism offered was, primarily, an extravagant claim: that it was possible for the living to communicate with the departed. By various means, people from all classes, religious traditions and geographical locations ‘tried’ the spirits, seeking to make contact with famous characters from history or departed family members. Spiritualism offered, sometimes, spectacular signs and wonders: flying furniture, levitating mediums and ghostly presences, all of which attracted the attention of journalists. Fashions for such signs came and went; the claim to communicate with the dead, however, remained at the heart of spiritualism.

Notes on a New Necrology

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 267-273
Author(s):  
Victor W. Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Know How ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Book Of The Dead

How does one review a book that both succeeds and fails spectacularly, that breaks new ground and then plants what is probably unfertile seed, that rather pretentiously stakes a claim to a “new area” of inquiry while grossly neglecting related extant work? The Twentieth Century Book of the Dead is a difficult book to read that has frustrated, excited, and stimulated me for enough weeks now that, though I still don't know how to review it, I am motivated to offer some advice to the naive reader which might at least assist him to read it (for it is indeed well worth the effort), and to add some comments of my own.

scholarly journals Getting off the Omnibus: Rejecting Free Will and Soul-Making Responses to the Problem of Evil

Open Theology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-42
Author(s):  
Brian C. Macallan
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
John Hick ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Greater Good ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Powerful Process

AbstractThe nature of suffering and the problem of evil have been perennial issues for many of the world’s religious traditions. Each in their own way has sought to address this problem, whether driven by the all too present reality of suffering or from philosophical and religious curiosities. The Christian tradition has offered numerous and diverse responses to the problem of evil. The free-will response to the problem of evil, with its roots in Augustine, has dominated the landscape in its attempt to justify evil and suffering as a result of the greater good of having free will. John Hick offers a ‘soul-making’ response to the problem of evil as an alternative to the free will response. Neither is effective in dealing with two key issues that underpin both responses – omnipotence and omniscience. In what follows I will contrast a process theological response to the problem of evil and suffering, and how it is better placed in dealing with both omnipotence and omniscience. By refashioning God as neither all-knowing nor all-powerful, process theodicy moves beyond the dead ends of both the free will and soul-making theodicy. Indeed, a process theodicy enables us to dismount the omnibus in search of a more holistic, and realistic, alternative to dealing with the problem of evil and suffering.

scholarly journals In loving memory of ‘us’: facing grief during the time of COVID-19 through redirecting perception of life’s realities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalmacito A Cordero
Keyword(s):  
Family Members ◽  
Complicated Process ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The One

Abstract Recent correspondence highlighted the complicated process of grief in the time of COVID-19 where some family members and the dying person too are undergoing distress. New rituals can lighten the process of coping with grief or death, one may find it difficult to hurdle such situation and move on without first redirecting one’s perception on the different realities of life. There are things that we can control but at the same time, things that are beyond our reach. With these realities, acceptance plays a key role to handle the situation. Acceptance is a person’s assent to life’s realities. Creativity in accepting grief or death is finding ways to lighten the heavy emotion of the ‘ones left and the one leaving’ through a preservation of memory. This is done through safeguarding and reliving the memories of the dead with various programs and advocacies.

The Parliamentary Papers of Nicholas Ferrar, 1624

1996 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 3-104
Author(s):  
David R. Ransome
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Health Spending ◽  
Historical Importance ◽  
The Church

Nicholas Ferrar's fame in the twentieth century rests largely upon religious foundations – as a saint of the Church of England and as one of the moving spirits at Little Gidding – but in fact his historical importance is more than merely religious, and indeed religion did not dominate his life before 1625. Born in London in February 1593, the youngest but one of a family of six, Nicholas was named for his father, a highly successful Merchant Adventurer who was also a Master of the Skinners Company. Small, fair-haired, precocious and frail, Nicholas was always his mother's favourite, and it was she who largely influenced his development. At the age of seventeen he was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, but soon after his twentieth birthday he left Cambridge for the sake of his health, spending the years 1613–17 on the continent, chiefly at Padua, where he studied medicine. On his return to England he did not resume his fellowship at Clare, but remained in London with his parents, attending to his now elderly father's business affairs which included membership of the East India and Virginia Companies – and acting as his executor upon his death in 1620.

‘Tomb to Give Away’: The Significance of Graves and Dead Bodies in Present-Day Austria

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Estella Weiss-Krejci
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Long Bone ◽  
Stream Channel ◽  
Small Stream ◽  
Small Glass ◽  
Great Speed ◽  
Water Container ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Northern Fringe

Several years ago, my son and I moved into an apartment on the northern fringe of Graz, the capital of Styria, Austria. One day I decided to take a walk in a nearby forest through which a small stream, the Gabriachbach, flows. As I walked along the stream, I noticed in the water coloured glass shards as well as many nicely cut stone blocks. I became increasingly more curious and started to search the stream bed systematically. Picking up more and more artefacts, my collection grew at a great speed and soon the pockets of my trousers and the plastic shopping bag that I happened to have on me started to burst. Among other items, I found a water container, a broken lantern, several small glass bottles, and the fragment of a human long bone. As I gradually moved upstream, I found more worked stones in association with the remains of an iron fence. At that moment the realization dawned upon me that I was standing in the midst of the cleared out and dumped remains from a cemetery. Inquiring about the provenance of the remains, I was told by a friend of mine that they derive from a nearby graveyard, most likely of St Veit, and date to the first half of the twentieth century; he found a gravestone with the inscription ‘1943’. The dumping probably took place at the end of the 1970s since at that time the stream channel had been reconstructed, apparently with stones and other materials deriving from the cemetery. To find myself amidst discarded cemetery remains did not particularly shock me at the time. I assume it is my cultural disposition as an Austrian—we have a reputation for concerning ourselves with death quite happily—not worrying about such types of confrontations with the inevitability of death. I remember feeling a bit sad about all the dead people, their grave stones, flower vases, candle holders, and all the other belongings. My thoughts also went to those who had cared for the graves and who were also long gone. What really stuck in my mind though, is that overwhelming feeling of the futility of any material accomplishment by the dead as well as the lack of remembrance for them.

Vedānta

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
True Self ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
The West ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Classical Systems ◽  
Sri Aurobindo ◽  
Hindu Community ◽  
The Individual

Indian philosophical speculation burgeoned in texts called Upaniṣads (from 800 bc), where views about a true Self (ātman) in relation to Brahman, the supreme reality, the Absolute or God, are propounded and explored. Early Upaniṣads were appended to an even older sacred literature, the Veda (‘Knowledge’), and became literally Vedānta, ‘the Veda’s last portion’. Classical systems of philosophy inspired by Upaniṣadic ideas also came to be known as Vedānta, as well as more recent spiritual thinking. Classical Vedānta is one of the great systems of Indian philosophy, extending almost two thousand years with hundreds of authors and several important subschools. In the modern period, Vedānta in the folk sense of spiritual thought deriving from Upaniṣads is a major cultural phenomenon. Understood broadly, Vedānta may even be said to be the philosophy of Hinduism, although in the classical period there are other schools (notably Mīmāṃsā) that purport to articulate right views and conduct for what may be called a Hindu community (the terms ‘Hindu’ and ‘Hinduism’ gained currency only after the Muslim invasion of the South Asian subcontinent, beginning rather late in classical times). Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), the great popularizer of Hindu ideas to the West, spoke of Vedānta as an umbrella philosophy of a Divine revealed diversely in the world’s religious traditions. Such inclusivism is an important theme in some classical Vedānta, but there are also virulent disputes about how Brahman should be conceived, in particular Brahman’s relation to the individual. In the twentieth century, philosophers such as Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, K.C. Bhattacharyya and T.M.P. Mahadevan have articulated idealist worldviews largely inspired by classical and pre-classical Vedānta. The mystic philosopher Sri Aurobindo propounds a theism and evolutionary theory he calls Vedānta, and many others, including political leaders such as Gandhi and spiritual figures as well as academics, have developed or defended Vedāntic views.

Anglicanism, Family Planning and Contraception: The Development of a Moral Teaching and its Ecumenical Implications

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-169
Author(s):  
John Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Family Planning ◽  
Birth Control ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Official Position ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis essay examines pressures and theological developments regarding sexuality and birth control within Anglicanism, as represented by statements from Lambeth Conferences and in discussions in the Church of England during the early to mid twentieth century, and notes some of the changes in ‘official’ position within US churches and especially The Episcopal Church. It offers comparison with the developments in moral theology within the Roman Catholic Church after 1930 and asks if, and by what means, the two Communions may come to agree on the specific issue of contraception.

Debating the Legal Status of the Ornaments Rubric: Ritualism and Royal Commissions in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century England

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 434-454
Author(s):  
Dan D. Cruickshank
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
The Public ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Parliamentary Oversight ◽  
The Church

This article uses the history of the Ornaments Rubric in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to explore the emergence of claims to self-governance within the Church of England in this period and the attempts by parliament to examine how independent the legal system of the church was from the secular state. First, it gives an overview of the history of the Ornaments Rubric in the various editions of the Book of Common Prayer and the Acts of Uniformity, presenting the legal uncertainty left by centuries of Prayer Book revision. It then explores how the Royal Commission into Ritualism (1867–70) and the Public Worship Regulation Act (1874) attempted to control Ritualist interpretations of the Ornaments Rubric through secular courts. Examining the failure of these attempts, it looks towards the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline (1904–6). Through the evidence given to the commission, it shows how the previous royal commission and the work of parliament and the courts had failed to stop the continuation of Ritualist belief in the church's independence from secular courts. Using the report of the royal commission, it shows how the commissioners attempted to build a via media between strict spiritual independence and complete parliamentary oversight.

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