Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Gary L. Steward
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
American Founding ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Opening Section ◽  
American Clergy

This opening section introduces the argument of the entire work, namely, that the American clergy who supported political resistance to the British did so in continuity with their own theological tradition. It also surveys a number of different approaches to interpreting the American Revolution. The influence of Bernard Bailyn’s Neo-Whig school of interpretation upon recent scholarship has significantly shaped how the American clergy’s arguments for resistance have been understood. Mark Noll, especially, has influenced how a number of historians have viewed the American clergy’s thought of this period, namely, as co-opted by secular philosophies and radical political views. The nature of political resistance doctrine sheds light on the role that Christianity played in the American founding.

“The Great Part of It Was Stolen”

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-31
Author(s):  
Gary L. Steward
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Great Part ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Made In

This chapter analyzes the justification of political resistance provided to the founding generation by Boston Congregationalist minister Jonathan Mayhew. Mayhew’s arguments made in 1750 influenced John Adams and a number who were active participants in the American Revolution. The source and context of Mayhew’s arguments is considered, first in light of eighteenth-century discussions in Britain, and then in light of the Protestant theological tradition. This chapter argues that Mayhew’s thought on the question of political resistance did not deviate from his inherited Protestant tradition. It is best understood as a renewed assertion of views found commonly within Reformed Protestantism, going back to at least the sixteenth century. Although Mayhew embraced unorthodox theology in other areas, he shared his views on political resistance with a number of more conservative clergymen who were united in their long-standing opposition to the claims of the Stuart absolutists.

Mary Linwood of Leicester's Pious Address of Violent Times

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Matthew Craske
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Contemporary Religion ◽  
The Subject

This article explores the role that contemporary religion and politics played in the subject matter of Mary Linwood's needlework paintings. Linwood was one of Britain's pioneering needlewomen of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Her approach to depicting famous narrative paintings in stitch has been largely overlooked by historians of art. The article is underpinned by use of primary source material, and draws on the most recent scholarship in the field of textile history, notably the work of Heidi Strobel and Rosika Desnoyers. Mary Linwood was an evangelical and a woman interested in the politics of the period. Her use of needlework was a means of both the expression of her piety and of the representation of her political views – especially attitudes to the brutality of the Napoleonic wars. The article also indicates that Linwood's views and medium were of remarkable interest to the wider public during the period.

“One of the Best Causes of the World”

2021 ◽  
pp. 91-108
Author(s):  
Gary L. Steward
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
The World ◽  
American Clergy

This chapter discusses the views of British clergymen regarding the doctrine of political resistance and American resistance activities in the 1760s and 1770s. The perspective of the British clergy provides important context for understanding the American clergy’s arguments in this period. Many British clergymen affirmed the doctrine of political resistance and sympathized with the American cause. The existence of a robust British resistance tradition calls into question those who would understand the political resistance thought of the period to be something uniquely American. While John Wesley believed the American colonists were in the wrong to resist their British authorities, his Tory views were not shared by a number of evangelical clergymen in England and were by no means representative of the evangelical perspective of the issue. When the American clergy deviated from Wesley on this question of resistance, they were not deviating from British evangelicals in general.

Dougie Young and political resistance in early Aboriginal country music

Popular Music ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (03) ◽  
pp. 538-559
Author(s):  
Toby Martin
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Country Music ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Conservative Politics ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Indigenous Groups

AbstractCountry music has a reputation for being the music of the American white working-class South and being closely aligned with conservative politics. However, country music has also been played by non-white minorities and has been a vivid way of expressing progressive political views. In the hands of the Indigenous peoples of Australia, country music has often given voice to a form of life-writing that critiques colonial power. The songs of Dougie Young, dating from the late 1950s, provide one of the earliest and most expressive examples of this use of country music. Young's songs were a type of social-realist satire and to be fully understood should be placed within the broader socio-political context of 1950s and 1960s Australia. Young's legacy was also important for Aboriginal musicians in the 1990s and the accompanying reassessment of Australia's colonial past. Country music has provided particular opportunities for minority and Indigenous groups seeking to use popular culture to tell their stories. This use of country music provides a new dimension to more conventional understandings of its political role.

The Master Ascendant

2020 ◽  
pp. 160-187
Author(s):  
Kate Fullagar
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Royal Academy ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Honorary Doctorate ◽  
Country House ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Way

Chapter 6 opens with some reminders of Reynolds’s ambivalent character. His political views are put to the test at the close of the Seven Years War, in 1763, when Britain announces victory but half the nation refuse to celebrate with the king. Reynolds performs similar balancing acts in his personal life, including romantically with Angelica Kauffmann and collegially with Thomas Gainsborough. Most of all we see Reynolds’s artful balancing in the way he secures the presidential appointment to Britain’s first Royal Academy of the Arts. The 1770s see further signs of ascension for Reynolds, such as his acquisitions of a new country house and an honorary doctorate. These years also yield further tests of his ambivalent politics. His portrait of Joseph Banks reveals a circumspect opinion of Pacific exploration while his effort to secure a Devonian Mayoral appointment reiterates his canny play of apologist and oppositional positions. The year 1775, however, presents the biggest challenge of all. His friends Johnson and Burke publish dramatically opposing views on the upcoming American Revolution and at the same time Reynolds’s dignity as President of the Royal Academy is threatened by a lampoon from a fellow academician.

Hannah Arendt, evil, and political resistance

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 125-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gavin Rae
Keyword(s):  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Individual Action ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Radical Evil ◽  
Recent Scholarship

While Hannah Arendt claimed to have abandoned her early conception of radical evil for a banal one, recent scholarship has questioned that conclusion. This article contributes to the debate by arguing that her conceptual alteration is best understood by engaging with the structure of norms subtending each conception. From this, I develop a compatibilist understanding that accounts for Arendt’s movement from a radical to a banal conception of evil, by claiming that it was because she came to reject the foundationalism of the former for the non-foundationalism of the latter, where norms are located from an ineffable ‘source’ diffusely spread throughout the society. While it might be thought that this means that such norms are all-encompassing to the extent that they determine individual action, I appeal to her notions of plurality, action, and natality, to argue that she defends the weaker claim that moral norms merely condition action. This demonstrates how Arendt’s conceptions of evil complement one another, highlights her understanding of the action–norms relation, and identifies that there is built into Arendt’s conception(s) of evil a resource for resisting totalitarian domination.

scholarly journals Disney's American Revolution

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 682-715
Author(s):  
SIMON P. NEWMAN
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
American Founding ◽  
Historical Interpretation ◽  
The Cold War

This essay adopts an innovative interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of Disney's representations of the American founding in television and movie productions as secondary works; that is, as works of historical interpretation. “The Liberty Story” (1957),Johnny Tremain(1957) andThe Swamp Fox(1959–60) are analysed in the context of contemporaraneous historiographical trends. The essay demonstrates that despite certain flaws and weaknesses, Disney's representations sometimes presented innovative themes and insightful interpretations, which at the height of the Cold War influenced popular understanding of the American founding and the society that it produced.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-130
Author(s):  
Gary L. Steward
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Thought Processes ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Major Shift ◽  
Religious Nature ◽  
Secular Terms ◽  
The Revolution

This chapter concludes by hinting at the broader implications for understanding the clergy’s political resistance thought during this time period. The clergy’s justification of political resistance in the American Revolution cannot be used to argue for a major shift in American Protestant thought. Nor should the Revolution be understood in purely secular terms. The justifications of resistance made by the clerical leaders highlight the religious nature of many people’s thought processes in this time period. While the patriot clergy rejected political absolutism and supported active measures of defensive resistance, this should not be understood as a defection from their historic Protestant tradition.

“No Bishop, No Tyrant!”

2021 ◽  
pp. 52-70
Author(s):  
Gary L. Steward
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
North America ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
American Clergy

This chapter discusses the apprehensions many American clergy felt over the issues of religious liberty on the eve of the American Revolution. The clergy in America were concerned about a rising political absolutism in England that threatened both their civil and religious liberties, and concern over religious issues played a significant role in the final break between the colonies and Great Britain. The plans to impose Episcopal bishops upon the colonies generated great concern, even as the British Parliament adopted an increasingly absolutist posture toward the colonies. The fear of a rising Roman Catholic presence in North America also put the colonies and clergymen on edge, provoking further calls for resistance and vigilance against these growing religious threats.

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