Religion, Politics, and the State

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonar L. Hernández Sandoval
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Central American ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
American Catholicism ◽  
Conflict And Cooperation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Functionalist Approach

The historiography of religion and politics in Central America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries delves into three key historical periods: (1) the era of nation-building and anticlericalism during the nineteenth century; (2) the age of liberal dictatorship and the resurgence of Catholicism during the first part of the twentieth century; and (3) the rise of progressive Catholicism and concurrent expansion of Protestantism during the Cold War. Writing on the subject has emphasized the relationship between religion and politics and the interaction between clerics and lay people. Scholars have moved beyond a purely functionalist approach to the study of religion. They have uncovered the two-sided nature of church–state relations, one marked by conflict and cooperation, the connection between religion and politics, the link between Central American Catholicism, and the global Catholic Church, and the history of lay agency within religious institutions.

Central Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 600-616
Author(s):  
Árpád von Klimó
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
State Socialism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Religious Landscape

Central Europe is still imagined as an area dominated by Christianity, for the most part the Catholic Church, in close alliance with Christian rulers who minimized the impact of both the Protestant Reformation and minorities such as Judaism. This idea rests, however, on an oversimplified picture of the religious history of the region. Recent research has shown that the reality was more complex, and that historians still know very little about what the overwhelming majority of people believed or how they practised their religion. Christianity has never completely monopolized the religious landscape of Central Europe and has itself been constantly changing. The history of Christianization, Reformation, empires, and nationalism present in Central Europe as well as state socialism, the Cold War and today’s relative pluralism give an idea of this complexity.

Operation Pedro Pan: The Migration of Unaccompanied Cuban Children to the United States, 1960–1962

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Casavantes Bradford
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federally Funded ◽  
Difficult Decision ◽  
History Of ◽  
Children’S Homes ◽  
Pedro Pan ◽  
The Cold War

Between the autumn of 1960 and October of 1962, the parents of more than fourteen thousand Cuban children made the difficult decision to send their children alone to the United States, where a young Irish immigrant priest, Father Bryan O. Walsh, arranged for them to be cared for by U.S. foster homes and in Catholic children’s homes and orphanages. The Cuban children’s exodus would later become known as Operation Pedro Pan; the federally funded and Catholic Church–administered program that was established to care for these children would be called the Cuban Children’s Program. Their interconnected trajectories are central to the history of post-revolutionary Cuba and of the Miami Cuban exile community, and shed important light on U.S.-Cuba and U.S.-Latin America relations during the height of the Cold War.

Contemporary Lao Buddhism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrice Ladwig
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Lao Pdr ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Indochina War

Lao Buddhism’s histories are deeply fragmented. Most Lao were deported to Siam in the nineteenth century, and after the demise of the French colonial regime, the country was drawn into the Second Indochina War. After two decades of brutal warfare and massive destructions, the Lao communist movement took power in 1975. This chapter examines the history of Lao Buddhism in the context of these events, and puts its main focus on the entanglement of religion and politics in the postcolonial phase, as the political polarization of the Lao sangha during the Cold War and the impact of the subsequent revolution remain crucial for understanding Buddhism’s position in the current Lao PDR. While under reformed socialism there has been a resurgence of Buddhism in the last two decades, the social and religious transformations resulting from rapid modernization through the capitalist economy and globalization bring new challenges for the Lao sangha.

Central America-US Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan D. McCormick
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Central America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Main Element ◽  
Democratic Capitalism ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War

Since gaining independence in 1823, the states comprising Central America have had a front seat to the rise of the United States as a global superpower. Indeed, more so than anywhere else, the United States has sought to use its power to shape Central America into a system that heeds US interests and abides by principles of liberal democratic capitalism. Relations have been characterized by US power wielded freely by officials and non-state actors alike to override the aspirations of Central American actors in favor of US political and economic objectives: from the days of US filibusterers invading Nicaragua in search of territory; to the occupations of the Dollar Diplomacy era, designed to maintain financial and economic stability; to the covert interventions of the Cold War era. For their part, the Central American states have, at various times, sought to challenge the brunt of US hegemony, most effectively when coordinating their foreign policies to balance against US power. These efforts—even when not rejected by the United States—have generally been short-lived, hampered by economic dependency and political rivalries. The result is a history of US-Central American relations that wavers between confrontation and cooperation, but is remarkable for the consistency of its main element: US dominance.

Introduction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily K. Hobson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
Central American ◽  
Gay And Lesbian ◽  
Aids Activism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Act Up ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

Narratives of the LGBT past have been constrained by exceptionalist narratives of Stonewall, the 1960s, and ACT UP. These narratives describe gay and lesbian radicalism as disappearing soon after 1969 and obscure the genealogies that fostered AIDS activism. The history of the gay and lesbian left counters these narratives, showing that across the 1970s and 1980s, radicals pursued an interconnected politics in which sexual liberation was the theory and radical solidarity the practice. Gay and lesbian leftists drew anti-imperialism from Black radicalism and the anti-war movement, engaged socialist and women of color feminisms, and redefined queer community by tying it to Central American solidarity. By the end of the Cold War these influences proved central to direct action against AIDS.

scholarly journals A left „theocracy“: The church and the state in revolutionary Nicaragua

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-178
Author(s):  
Daniel Jakopovich
Keyword(s):  
Liberation Theology ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Critical Overview

This paper analyses the antagonism between the established (Nicaraguan and global) Catholic Church and the Sandinista movement and government, which was one of the focal points for the ascendancy of a continental and global liberation theology movement. The paper provides a critical overview of the Nicaraguan liberation theology movement, as well as Sandinista strategies, primarily in relation to the social functions of religion and religious institutions. The central focus of this essay is to identify how the left-theological and Sandinista understanding of the imperatives of the counter-hegemonic project, the ?historical bloc? (conceived as a system of political and social networks and alliances) and the ?national-popular? strategy contributed to the tentative naissance of a novel state religion and a novel political project: a left-wing ?theocratic? social order. The Nicaraguan experience is useful for focusing the wider discussion about the importance of context-specific normative judgments about Church-state relations.

In Defense of Civil and Religious Liberty: Anti-Sabbatarianism in the United States before the Civil War

2013 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Verhoeven
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
Jacksonian Era ◽  
Evangelical Churches ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Relations

The decades before the Civil War witnessed a series of battles over the meaning and legal status of the American Sabbath. Scholarship has focused on the Sabbatarian movement, a cluster of evangelical churches that sought to institutionalize the Sunday Sabbath. This article takes a new approach by investigating the anti-Sabbatarian movement. In a series of controversies, from Sunday mail in the Jacksonian era to the running of Sunday streetcars on the eve of the Civil War, anti-Sabbatarians rallied against Sabbath laws as an infringement of civil and religious liberty. Though diverse in orientation, anti-Sabbatarians agreed that religion and politics should be kept apart, and that the United States was not, in constitutional terms, a Christian nation. A study of anti-Sabbatarianism is thus of rich significance for the history of Church-State relations in the United States.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document