“It’s Not the Beat, but It’s the Word that Sets the People Free”: Race, Technology, and Theology in the Emergence of Christian Rap Music

Pneuma ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-217
Author(s):  
Josef Sorett
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Rap Music ◽  
New Music ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
Racial Ideology ◽  
Word Of Faith ◽  
The People ◽  
Historical Moment

AbstractIn an effort to address lacunae in the literature on hip hop, as well as to explore the role of new music and media in Pentecostal traditions, this essay examines rap music within the narratives of American religious history. Specifically, through an engagement with the life, ministry, and music of Stephen Wiley — who recorded the first commercially-released Christian rap song in 1985 — this essay offers an account of hip hop as a window into the intersections of religion, race, and media near the end of the twentieth century. It shows that the cultural and theological traditions of Pentecostalism were central to Wiley’s understanding of the significance of racial ideology and technology in his rap ministry. Additionally, Wiley’s story helps to identify a theological, cultural, and technological terrain that is shared, if contested, by mainline Protestant, neo-Pentecostal, and Word of Faith Christians during a historical moment that has been described as post-denominational.

Institutionalization and Evangelization in the Argentine Church: Córdoba Under Zenón Bustos, 1905-1919

1989 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-381
Author(s):  
Arthur R. Liebscher
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Central City ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
The People ◽  
National Leadership ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Church

To the dismay of today's social progressives, the Argentine Catholic church addresses the moral situation of its people but also shies away from specific political positions or other hint of secular involvement. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the church set out to secure its place in national leadership by strengthening religious institutions and withdrawing clergy from politics. The church struggled to overcome a heritage of organizational weakness in order to promote evangelization, that is, to extend its spiritual influence within Argentina. The bishop of the central city of Córdoba, Franciscan Friar Zenón Bustos y Ferreyra (1905-1925), reinforced pastoral care, catechesis, and education. After 1912, as politics became more heated, Bustos insisted that priests abstain from partisan activities and dedicate themselves to ministry. The church casts itself in the role of national guardian, not of the government, but of the faith and morals of the people.

Are the BRICS a Viable Alternative to the West? A Succinct Analysis

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 61-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Calderón-Zaks
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Global South ◽  
Viable Alternative ◽  
The West ◽  
The People

Abstract In this article I briefly examine the perceived role of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—also known as the BRICS—as an alternative to the West in the Global South. Their patterns of development must be placed in the context of the West’s development prior to and during the twentieth century. In fact, the burden of “development” remains on the shoulders of the people on the peripheries of the Americas and Africa.

scholarly journals The Promise of the 1821 Revolution and the Suffering Body. Some thoughts on Modernisation and Anti-intellectualism

2013 ◽  
pp. 49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Andriakaina
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Grand Narrative ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Popular Narrative ◽  
The People ◽  
Freedom Fighters ◽  
Popular View ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Popular Nationalism

How can we understand and interpret the popular narrative of the 1821 revolution that speaks for the suffering body of the fighter while it reproaches the "Frenchified heterochthons" and conveys a kind of anti intellectualism (defined broadly and loosely by Merle Curti as "a suspicion of, opposition to, or derogation of intellectuals")? The popular view of 1821 has its origins in the memoirs of the "freedom fighters" written after the War of Independence. Its main motifs travelled from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century and lent themselves to multiple readings and various ideological uses. Although it has a socio political content, it cannot be explained in terms of a grand narrative of class war, as some Marxist historians of the twentieth century argue; neither can it be understood in terms of the grand narrative of Greek modernisation, that is, as a survival from a previous stage of historical development, a relic from the past, even though it draws its motives from traditional sources and idealises the role of chieftains in the War of Independence. I suggest that we approach the anti-intellectualism of the early nineteenth century from an anti-essentialist perspective of Greek history that highlights the Janus-face of modernisation and the ambivalent nature of modern ideologies (especially of popular nationalism) with regard to the relation between the intellectual and the people or the nation.

scholarly journals A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON SOCIAL JUSTICE AS THE RULE OF LAW

2019 ◽  
pp. 116-123
Author(s):  
Sergey N. Smolnikov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Just Society ◽  
Historical Moment

The article considers the place of social justice in modern law. Various aspects are noted: its relationship with the social state, legal state, civilizational particularities, historical features. The question of the significance of choice between the legality and legitimacy of power as a factor in the establishment of social justice is considered. The article raises the issue of the subject-object essence of social justice. It provides a comparison of two approaches to social justice in modern Russia — liberal and conservative, and notes the contradictory nature of both. Attention is drawn to the role of elites, the intelligentsia and the people in the embodiment of the liberal project. The author reveals the historical and civilizational prerequisites for the conservative project domination, its being in demand on the part of both the authorities and significant segments of the population, and its correspondence to the historical moment. The similarity of the conservative response to the challenges facing the society in the United States, Japan, Britain and Russia is substantiated. A sociological comparison of positions on the issues of law as social justice in the West and in Russia is given. There is an increasing divergence in understanding social justice both in the countries of the West (destruction of the social contract, welfare state) and between the West and the rest of the world. The theme of justice is increasingly playing a role in causing mutual claims rather than in stabilizing and maintaining international and civil peace. The paper considers attempts to create domestic models of a just society. Social justice is regarded as a projective concept and presupposes the existence of models of the expected and ideal future of society. The world trend towards change in the ideas of the subject of law and of the paradigm shift from liberalism to transhumanism is noted. It is argued that it is impossible to identify law with social justice.

From 1989, or European Music and the Modernist Unconscious

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth Brodsky
Keyword(s):  
World Politics ◽  
New Music ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
New Year’S Eve ◽  
Musical Modernism ◽  
To Come ◽  
Historical Moment

What happened to musical modernism? When did it end? Did it end? This unorthodox Lacanian account of European New Music focuses on the unlikely year 1989, when New Music hardly takes center stage. Instead one finds Rostropovich playing Bach at Checkpoint Charlie; or Bernstein changing “Joy” to “Freedom” in Beethoven's Ninth; or David Hasselhoff lip-synching “Looking for Freedom” to thousands on New Year's Eve. But if such spectacles claim to master their historical moment, New Music unconsciously takes the role of analyst. In so doing, it restages earlier scenes of modernism. As world politics witnesses a turning away from the possibility of revolution, musical modernism revolves in place, performing century-old tasks of losing, failing, and beginning again, in preparation for a revolution to come.

The Social Life of Dances

Valuing Dance ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 89-140
Author(s):  
Susan Leigh Foster
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Wild West Shows ◽  
Studio Instruction ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Dances ◽  
Private Studio ◽  
Historical Moment

Chapter 3 pursues the thesis that commodity and gift forms of exchange are interconnected and inseparable. It does this through an examination of three case studies: hip-hop, private dance studio instruction, and powwow. The recent histories of these three examples is examined alongside some of their antecedents at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hip-hop is located along a continuum with the early twentieth-century African American social dances that fueled a dance craze taking place in the urban United States. Private studio instruction is traced back to the social and modern dance instruction offered by entrepreneurial teachers who codified and sold those dances. Powwows are connected to the Wild West shows and other exhibitions of Native dances that brought Native peoples into greater contact with one another and with white audiences. Analyzing the development of these dance practices over time enables a more focused inquiry into the values and belief systems that infuse dance in a given historical moment and the ways that these connect to larger systems of shared values. Each example also calls attention to the way that commodification yields values that collude with forms of social and political domination including racialization and racist ideologies, Orientalism and exoticism, and colonial settler logics.

The Study of Political Leadership

1950 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 904-915 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lester G. Seligman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Direct Democracy ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
Chief Executive ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Major Theme ◽  
The People ◽  
Interactive Relation

It is a lesser question for the partisans of democracy to find means of governing the people than to get the people to choose the men most capable of governing.Alexis de Tocqueville, in a letter to John Stuart Mill.Politics by leadership is one of the distinguishing features of the twentieth century. If the eighteenth century enunciated popular sovereignty and direct democracy as a major theme in democratic thought and the nineteenth century was concerned with the challenge of stratification and group conflict, then twentieth century trends have made us sensitive to the role of leadership. The search for the values of security and equality have led to changes in the character of politics. If one were to delineate this newer pattern of a politics by leadership, it would include the following: (1) the shift in the center of conflict resolution and initiative from parliamentary bodies and economic institutions to executive leadership; (2) the proliferation of the immediate office of the chief executive from its cabinet-restricted status to a collectivity of co-adjuting instrumentalities; (3) the tendency toward increased centralization of political parties, with the subordination of the victorious parties as instruments for the chief executive; (4) the calculated manipulation of irrationalities by political leadership through the vast power-potential of mass communications; (5) the displacement of the amateur by the professional politician and civil servant; (6) the growth of bureaucracy as a source and technique of executive power but also as a fulcrum which all contestants for power attempt to employ; (7) the growth of interest groups in size, number and influence, with the tendency toward bureaucratization of their internal structure; (8) the changing role of the public that finds its effective voice in a direct and an interactive relation with the chief executive.

scholarly journals Phan Chau Trinh’s ideology of the position and role of the people and its significance in promoting the role of the people in Vietnam today

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (08) ◽  
pp. 849-859
Author(s):  
Tran Mai Uoc ◽  
◽  
Vu Thi Thu Huyen ◽  
Tran Thi Hoa ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Development History ◽  
The People

Phan Chau Trinh (1872 – 1926) was a leader of the Duy Tan Movement. With his conception of the position and role of the people, he left a bold mark on the nation’s development history from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century. From analyzing and clarifying the main contents and limitations of Phan Chau Trinh’s conception of the position and role of the people, the article has also raised its meaning for promoting the role of the people in the present period.

Theology

2019 ◽  
pp. 327-338
Author(s):  
Jesudas Athyal
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Kingdom Of God ◽  
Religious Fundamentalism ◽  
People Of God ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The People ◽  
The Church

The arrival in South Asia of the Western missionaries marked a turning point in the Babylonian connection of the church. While Christians in South India initially welcomed the missionaries, their reforms turned traditional Christians against the missionaries. Dalit theology emerged, rejecting the notion that a caste-ridden society and Christianity are compatible. The retreat of communism led to the rise of secularism and religious fundamentalism, while in South Asia, this tension led to renewal of religion. ‘Little Traditions’ are the narratives subsumed by mainline religions; they play a role in interreligious encounters. Pentecostalism in India at the beginning of the twentieth century appealed to Dalits as an alternative to the traditional churches. In South Asia, Western ethnocentrism often identified Christianity almost exclusively with European culture. Religiosity and poverty are two realities in Asia and theologising in the region needs to take seriously the struggles for full humanity; double-baptism refers to Christian collaboration with believers of other religions and secular ideologies while engaging with Asian poverty. The role of theology in repressive contexts is to urge the people of God to keep in dialectical tension the vision of the Kingdom of God and the struggles for freedom, justice and equality.

The Studio

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Patrick Bell
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Musical Instrument ◽  
Collaborative Process ◽  
Music Production ◽  
Beach Boys ◽  
The 1960S

Chapter 2 discusses the role of the producer, the concept of instrumentality, and how the recording studio has come to be conceptualized as an instrument since the mid-twentieth century. As exemplified by the practices of producers in the 1950s (Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller) and the 1960s (Phil Spector, the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, and Motown’s Berry Gordy), early iterations of the studio as musical instrument entailed a collaborative process of working with musicians and studio personnel. In the early 1970s playing the studio as musical instrument took on a new meaning in the hands of Jamaican dub producers like King Tubby, who forewent working with musicians in the studio and instead reimagined and remixed prerecorded tracks by playing the equipment of the studio. This approach was furthered by hip-hop producers in New York, notably the Bomb Squad, who incorporated the sampler into their studio-playing practices. Finally, a glimpse into the practices of Max Martin demonstrates that in contemporary music production DAWs are the de facto instrument.

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