The 1950s: Part Two

2019 ◽  
pp. 195-248
Author(s):  
Steven K. Green

This chapter continues with the examination of the church–state events of the 1950s. It begins with the Protestant–Catholic tensions associated with the Red Scare and the congressional investigations into communism, particularly the controversy surrounding Catholic support for the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy. It continues with an examination of a thawing of religious tensions brought about by the religious revival of the 1950s and the growth of ecumenism and religious cooperation. This section focuses on the impact of three religious figures: Bishop Fulton Sheen, Billy Graham, and Norman Vincent Peale. The chapter concludes with an examination of the Protestant opposition to the candidacy of John F. Kennedy for U.S. president, an effort that was led by Graham, Peale, and POAU.

Author(s):  
Mark O'Brien

This chapter examines the 1950s, a decade of rancorous division among journalists. Alongside economic depression and political instability and against the backdrop of the Cold War came church-fuelled allegations of communism within Dublin journalism. The red-scare that followed exposed deep divisions within the formally untied ranks of the union and the declaration of a republic in 1949 led some journalists to object to being represented by a London-based trade union. Thus emerged the short-lived, but extremely divisive, Guild of Irish Journalists. It was, in some respects, a last attempt by political parties and the church to re-assert control over journalists in Ireland.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Rotimi Williams Omotoye

Pentecostalism as a new wave of Christianity became more pronounced in 1970's and beyond in Nigeria. Since then scholars of Religion, History, Sociology and Political Science have shown keen interest in the study of the Churches known as Pentecostals because of the impact they have made on the society. The Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) was established by Pastor Josiah Akindayomi in Lagos,Nigeria in 1952. After his demise, he was succeeded by Pastor Adeboye Adejare Enock. The problem of study of this research was an examination of the expansion of the Redeemed Christian Church of God to North America, Caribbean and Canada. The missionary activities of the church could be regarded as a reversed mission in the propagation of Christianity by Africans in the Diaspora. The methodology adopted was historical. The primary and secondary sources of information were also germane in the research. The findings of the research indicated that the Redeemed Christian Church of God was founded in North America by Immigrants from Nigeria. Pastor Adeboye Enock Adejare had much influence on the Church within and outside the country because of his charisma. The Church has become a place of refuge for many immigrants. They are also contributing to the economy of the United States of America. However, the members of the Church were faced with some challenges, such as security scrutiny by the security agencies. In conclusion, the RCCGNA was a denomination that had been accepted and embraced by Nigerians and African immigrants in the United States of America.


Author(s):  
Adam Laats

By the 1950s, tensions within the world of fundamentalism led to a new effort at reform. Self-proclaimed neo-evangelical reformers hoped to strip away some of the unnecessary harshness of fundamentalist traditions while remaining truly evangelical Christians. Often these reforms were personified in the revival campaigns of evangelist Billy Graham. The network of fundamentalist schools struggled to figure out its relationship to this new divide in the fundamentalist family. Some schools embraced the reform, while others decried it. At the same time, faculty members at all the schools wrestled with strict supervision of their religious beliefs and teaching. From time to time, schools purged suspect faculty members, as in the 1953 firing of Ted Mercer at Bob Jones University.


Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta

The chapter on Poland focuses on two questions. Why, in contrast to all other state-socialist countries, did the church’s capacity for integration actually increase rather than decrease despite persecution and discrimination during the communist period? And why has this capacity also remained more or less constant (albeit to a lesser extent) in the period since the end of communist rule? The authors have identified four key factors in the remarkable resistance of the Polish Catholic Church during the period of communist persecution: the fusion of religious and national values, the specific conflict dynamics of the church’s struggle with the state, the structural conservatism of agricultural production in Poland, and the actions of Pope John Paul II. Explanations for the surprising stability of religiosity in Poland after 1990 point to the behaviour of the Church itself, to the internal pluralization of Catholicism, and to the impact of a homogeneous religious culture.


Author(s):  
Sam Brewitt-Taylor

This chapter outlines three examples of how secular theology was put into practice in the 1960s: Nick Stacey’s innovations in the parish of Woolwich; the radicalization of the ‘Parish and People’ organization; and the radicalization of Britain’s Student Christian Movement, which during the 1950s was the largest student religious organization in the country. The chapter argues that secular theology contained an inherent dynamic of ever-increasing radicalization, which irresistibly propelled its adherents from the ecclesiastical radicalism of the early 1960s to the more secular Christian radicalism of the late 1960s. Secular theology promised that the reunification of the church and the world would produce nothing less than the transformative healing of society. As the 1960s went on, this vision pushed radical Christian leaders to sacrifice more and more of their ecclesiastical culture as they pursued their goal of social transformation.


Author(s):  
Clive D. Field

Moving beyond the (now somewhat tired) debates about secularization as paradigm, theory, or master narrative, this book focuses upon the empirical evidence for secularization, viewed in its descriptive sense as the waning social influence of religion, in Britain. Particular emphasis is attached to the two key performance indicators of religious allegiance and churchgoing, each subsuming several sub-indicators, between 1880 and 1945, including the first substantive account of secularization during the fin de siècle. A wide range of primary sources is deployed, many relatively or entirely unknown, and with due regard to their methodological and interpretative challenges. On the back of them, a cross-cutting statistical measure of ‘active church adherence’ is devised, which clearly shows how secularization has been a reality and a gradual, not revolutionary, process. The most likely causes of secularization were an incremental demise of a Sabbatarian culture and of religious socialization (in the church, at home, and in the school). The analysis is also extended backwards, to include a summary of developments during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; and laterally, to incorporate a preliminary evaluation of a six-dimensional model of ‘diffusive religion’, demonstrating that these alternative performance indicators have hitherto failed to prove that secularization has not occurred. The book is designed as a prequel to the author’s previous volumes on the chronology of British secularization – Britain’s Last Religious Revival? (2015) and Secularization in the Long 1960s (2017). Together, they offer a holistic picture of religious transformation in Britain during the key secularizing century of 1880–1980. [250 words]


Author(s):  
Robert H. Ellison

Prompted by the convulsions of the late eighteenth century and inspired by the expansion of evangelicalism across the North Atlantic world, Protestant Dissenters from the 1790s eagerly subscribed to a millennial vision of a world transformed through missionary activism and religious revival. Voluntary societies proliferated in the early nineteenth century to spread the gospel and transform society at home and overseas. In doing so, they engaged many thousands of converts who felt the call to share their experience of personal conversion with others. Though social respectability and business methods became a notable feature of Victorian Nonconformity, the religious populism of the earlier period did not disappear and religious revival remained a key component of Dissenting experience. The impact of this revitalization was mixed. On the one hand, growth was not sustained in the long term and, to some extent, involvement in interdenominational activity undermined denominational identity; on the other hand, Nonconformists gained a social and political prominence they had not enjoyed since the middle of the seventeenth century and their efforts laid the basis for the twentieth-century explosion of evangelicalism in Africa, Asia, and South America.


Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Susana Mosquera

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments established important restrictions on religious freedom. Due to a restrictive interpretation of the right to religious freedom, religion was placed in the category of “non-essential activity” and was, therefore, unprotected. Within this framework, this paper tries to offer a reflection on the relevance of the dual nature of religious freedom as an individual and collective right, since the current crisis has made it clear that the individual dimension of religious freedom is vulnerable when the legal model does not offer an adequate institutional guarantee to the collective dimension of religious freedom.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan Gao ◽  
Junxi Qian ◽  
Zhenjie Yuan

This article provides a multi-scaled, grounded understanding of how secularization and re-sacralization occur simultaneously in a context of rapid modernization. Recent geographical scholarship in the geography of religion have exhibited deficient reflection over the geo-historical contingencies and complexities of secularization and secularity. This article seeks to re-conceptualize secularization as a multi-scaled, grounded and self-reflective process through an empirical study of the hybrid, contradictory processes of secularization and postsecular religious revival in a ‘gospel village’ in Shenzhen, China. In this rapidly urbanizing village, Christian belief inherited from Western missionary work has gradually lost its hold amidst modernization and urbanization. However, the inflow of rural migrant workers has re-invigorated the church. Christianity has created possibilities for postsecular ethics and resistances, enabling migrant workers to materially, symbolically and emotionally settle in a new socio-economic environment. Also, new situated religiosities arise as theological interpretations are used to negotiate and even legitimize social inequalities and alienation. This article therefore argues that the postsecular turn in human geography needs to consider how the postsecular articulates, and co-evolves with, secular conditions of being in the world. It highlights the hybrid and contested nature of the secularization process, which gives rise not only to disengaged belief and immanent consciousness but also to new aspirations for, and formations of, religiosities.


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