John Courtney Murray

2021 ◽  
pp. 180-198
Author(s):  
Francesca Cadeddu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
American History ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Religious Landscape ◽  
John Courtney Murray

This chapter offers an insight on the intellectual relationship between Reinhold Niebuhr and John Courtney Murray, SJ. Newly discovered archival documents highlight their roles as consultants to the Basic Issues Program of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (CSDI), established in 1957. The activities of the programme were based on debates pertaining to topics including religious pluralism, civic unity, and natural law. Niebuhr and Murray had the opportunity to present their perspectives on the United States religious landscape and the issues raised by ecumenical and social relations between the Protestant majority and the Catholic minority. What emerges from their confrontation is not a search for conciliation, but rather a representation of Reinhold Niebuhr’s understanding of pre-conciliar Catholic theology and John Courtney Murray’s effort to contribute to the acknowledgement of Catholics within American history and society.

scholarly journals The Polish American narratives, memories and identities in the historian’s job

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 67-79
Author(s):  
Joanna Wojdon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Large Group ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Official Sources

The article concerns different kinds of “personal” (in contrast to “official”) sources used by historians dealing with the post-World War II Polish American history. The Author considers advantages and shortcomings of analyzing personal correspondence, personal memos, diaries and memoirs, formal and informal interviews and other oral testimonies, but also difficulties and problems they bring to a researcher. Studying those types of source is however often crucial in the absence of official archival documents reflecting e.g. the ethnic identity of the large group of the Americans of Polish descent, or the backstage of the process of their assimilation and organization in the United States.

Reinhold Niebuhr: The Racial Liberal as Burkean

Prospects ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 641-661
Author(s):  
Greg Robinson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Basic Fact ◽  
Mass Education ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr

The Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was among the most influential thinkers in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. In a series of books published during the period, including The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941), The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944), and The Irony of American History (1952), as well as numerous shorter pieces, Niebuhr challenged Americans to develop a more complex and profound view of their history and political life. His major thesis was that individual pride and self-love, which he called “original sin,” were the chief source of conflict and injustice in human society. Neither mass education, enlightened social policy, or worker revolution could change the basic fact of human nature: people were driven by a need to wield power over others and were too often tempted to pursue evil over good in order to attain power. Although humans were capable of positive actions, even these contained within them the seeds of destructive ego-force.

Gendered differences in emigration and mobility perspectives among European researchers working abroad

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Scheibelhofer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
The Future ◽  
Highly Skilled

This paper focuses on gendered mobilities of highly skilled researchers working abroad. It is based on an empirical qualitative study that explored the mobility aspirations of Austrian scientists who were working in the United States at the time they were interviewed. Supported by a case study, the paper demonstrates how a qualitative research strategy including graphic drawings sketched by the interviewed persons can help us gain a better understanding of the gendered importance of social relations for the future mobility aspirations of scientists working abroad.

Millennial Missionaries

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Dugan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
The United States ◽  
College Campuses ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Gender Essentialism ◽  
Craft Beer ◽  
Catholic University ◽  
Religious Piety ◽  
Religious Landscape

This book is an ethnography of millennial-generation Catholic missionaries. The Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) began hiring young adults to evangelize students on college campuses in 1998. Since then, FOCUS missionaries have developed a style of Catholic evangelization that navigates between strict and savvy interpretations of Catholic teaching in contemporary US youth culture. The Catholicism that FOCUS missionaries embrace and promote grew up with them and amid their middle-class American norms—missionaries own iPhones, drink craft beer, and create March Madness brackets. Born in the 1990s, millennial missionaries in their skinny jeans and devotional tattoos, large-framed glasses and scapulars embody an attractive style of Catholicism. They love saints and have memorized the “Tantum Ergo,” are fluent in college-student slang, but reject hook-up culture in favor of gender essentialism dictated by papal teachings. Missionaries rely on their social capital to make Catholicism cool. Many of their peers have been characterized as defectors from religious institutions. Yet, underneath the rise of “nones” is a story of increased religious piety. This book studies religion in the United States from the perspective of proud Catholic millennials. As they navigate their Catholic and US identities, these missionaries propose Catholicism as uniquely able to overcome perceived threats of secularism, relativism, and modernity. How, why, and with what implications is this Catholicism enacted? These questions, which point to power struggles between US culture and religious identity, drive this book. Through their prayers and evangelization efforts, missionaries are reshaping Catholic identity and shifting the religious landscape of the United States.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caron E. Gentry
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Imago Dei ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
President Obama ◽  
Reinhold Niebuhr ◽  
Christian Realism ◽  
Feminist Thought

This introduction contrasts the election of President Obama with the election of President Trump, introducing the concept of anxiety politics and the role of emotions in discourse. It argues that while Christian realism, as articulated by Reinhold Niebuhr, continues to be relevant, its discussion of power structures and anxiety needs to be reevaluated in light of feminist thought. It does so by intersecting Niebuhr with other theologies on the imago dei and creativity. In this way it can better account for the racial and misogynist structures that the United States is founded upon and that continue to haunt and effect US politics.

Racialized Political Consumerism in the United States

2018 ◽  
pp. 680-698
Author(s):  
Bo Yun Park
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American History ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Consumerism ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
Political Tradition ◽  
Democratic Societies

In the United States, political consumerism has evolved alongside the country’s racial struggles. Throughout American history, ethnoracial minority groups have used different forms of racialized political consumerism in order to advance their rights. White supremacist groups have also taken part in boycotts to promote their cause. Addressing the need to assess the meaning and significance of a tactic that is considered to be a longstanding political tradition, this chapter provides an analytical guide for the study of racialized political consumerism in democratic societies. It does so by (1) illustrating the historical and contemporary uses of political consumerism in racial struggles in the United States, (2) examining the different forms of political consumerism used by ethnoracial minorities, and (3) discussing the theoretical value of the concept of racialized political consumerism.

Bones of Contention: China’s World War II Military Graves in India, Burma, and Papua New Guinea

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linh D. Vu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Chinese State ◽  
International Status

Abstract Exploring the construction and maintenance of Nationalist Chinese soldiers’ graves overseas, this article sheds light on post-World War II commemorative politics. After having fought for the Allies against Japanese aggression in the China-Burma-India Theater, the Chinese expeditionary troops sporadically received posthumous care from Chinese veterans and diaspora groups. In the Southeast Asia Theater, the Chinese soldiers imprisoned in the Japanese-run camps in Rabaul were denied burial in the Allied war cemetery and recognition as military heroes. Analyzing archival documents from China, Taiwan, Britain, Australia, and the United States, I demonstrate how the afterlife of Chinese servicemen under foreign sovereignties mattered in the making of the modern Chinese state and its international status.

Equal Opportunity in a Pluralistic Society

1987 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Nickel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Pluralistic Society ◽  
Self Image ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The U.S

The United States has never been culturally or religiously homogeneous, but its diversity has greatly increased over the last century. Although the U.S. was first a multicultural nation through conquest and enslavement, its present diversity is due equally to immigration. In this paper I try to explain the difference it makes for one area of thought and policy – equal opportunity – if we incorporate cultural and religious pluralism into our national self-image. Formulating and implementing a policy of equal opportunity is more difficult in diverse, pluralistic countries than it is in homogeneous ones. My focus is cultural and religious diversity in the United States, but my conclusions will apply to many other countries – including ones whose pluralism is found more in religion than in culture.

Financial Crises in American History

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Nitschke ◽  
Mark Rose
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
American History ◽  
Financial Crises ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Changing Economy ◽  
Political Design

U.S. history is full of frequent and often devastating financial crises. They have coincided with business cycle downturns, but they have been rooted in the political design of markets. Financial crises have also drawn from changes in the underpinning cultures, knowledge systems, and ideologies of marketplace transactions. The United States’ political and economic development spawned, guided, and modified general factors in crisis causation. Broadly viewed, the reasons for financial crises have been recurrent in their form but historically specific in their configuration: causation has always revolved around relatively sudden reversals of investor perceptions of commercial growth, stock market gains, monetary availability, currency stability, and political predictability. The United States’ 19th-century financial crises, which happened in rapid succession, are best described as disturbances tied to market making, nation building, and empire creation. Ongoing changes in America’s financial system aided rapid national growth through the efficient distribution of credit to a spatially and organizationally changing economy. But complex political processes—whether Western expansion, the development of incorporation laws, or the nation’s foreign relations—also underlay the easy availability of credit. The relationship between systemic instability and ideas and ideals of economic growth, politically enacted, was then mirrored in the 19th century. Following the “Golden Age” of crash-free capitalism in the two decades after the Second World War, the recurrence of financial crises in American history coincided with the dominance of the market in statecraft. Banking and other crises were a product of political economy. The Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2008 not only once again changed the regulatory environment in an attempt to correct past mistakes, but also considerably broadened the discursive situation of financial crises as academic topics.

Conflicting Identities: An Ethnographic Account of Conflict and Schism in an Episcopal Parish

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-230
Author(s):  
Joyce Ann Mercer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Congregational Study ◽  
Practical Theological ◽  
Religious Landscape ◽  
Interacting Features

This paper draws upon a congregational study of an Episcopal parish in the United States in conflict over sexuality issues. Based on ethnographic research, the paper tells the story of a small Northern Virginia church’s internal struggles, schism, and continuing post-schism conflicts, in the context of its changing external social and religious landscape. A practical theological analysis of these conflicts explores the existence of different theological and political ecclesiologies shaping the conflict, as well as utilizing the work of peace scholars Marie Dugan 1 and John Paul Lederach 2 to consider conflict’s multidimensional, interacting features.

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