Pulp Catholicism: Catholics in American Popular Film

Author(s):  
Anthony Burke Smith

This chapter assays some of the roles that Catholics played in the art form/industry that shared with jazz music a distinction as the most influential American cultural product of the twentieth century. It uncovers a rich, nearly lost history of apostolic film production—launched prior to 1920—under the auspices of the Catholic Art Association. Catholic tastemakers' relatively sophisticated embrace of visual mass culture stood in marked contrast to the later heavy-handed censorship motive that was often ascribed to the church. The film industry's original production code was written in 1930 by the prominent film-friendly Jesuit and theatrical impresario Daniel Lord; in later incarnations a harsher code was enforced with gusto by a small group of highly influential laymen.

Author(s):  
David Luscombe

This chapter discusses the contributions that were made by former Fellows of the Academy to the study of the medieval church. It states that the history of the medieval church is inseparable from the general history of the Middle Ages, since the church shaped society and society shaped the church. The chapter determines that no hard and fast distinction can always be made between the works by ecclesiastical historians during the twentieth century, and the contributions made to general history by other historians.


2018 ◽  
pp. 25-65
Author(s):  
Anna Dahlgren

Chapter 1 considers the mechanisms of breaks and continuities in the history of photocollage with regard to gender, genre and locations of display. Collage is commonly celebrated as a twentieth-century art form invented by Dada artists in the 1910s. Yet there was already a vibrant culture of making photocollages in Victorian Britain. From an art historical perspective this can be interpreted as an expression of typical modernist amnesia. The default stance of the early twentieth century’s avant-garde was to be radically, ground-breakingly new and different from any historical precursors. However, there is, when turning to the illustrated press, also a trajectory of continuity and withholding of traditions in the history of photocollage. This chapter has two parts. The first includes a critical investigation of the writings on the history of photocollage between the 1970s and 2010s, focusing on the arguments and rationales of forgetting and retrieving those nineteenth-century forerunners. It includes examples of amnesia and recognition and revaluation. The second is a close study of a number of images that appear in Victorian albums produced between 1870 and 1900 and their contemporary counterparts in the visual culture of illustrated journals and books.


Author(s):  
Ruth Coates

Chapter 2 sets out the history of the reception of deification in Russia in the long nineteenth century, drawing attention to the breadth and diversity of the theme’s manifestation, and pointing to the connections with inter-revolutionary religious thought. It examines how deification is understood variously in the spheres of monasticism, Orthodox institutions of higher education, and political culture. It identifies the novelist Fedor Dostoevsky and the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev as the most influential elite cultural expressions of the idea of deification, and the primary conduits through which Western European philosophical expressions of deification reach early twentieth-century Russian religious thought. Inspired by the anthropotheism of Feuerbach, and Stirner’s response to this, Dostoevsky brings to the fore the problem of illegitimate self-apotheosis, whilst Soloviev, in his philosophy of divine humanity, bequeaths deification to his successors both as this is understood by the church and in its iteration in German metaphysical idealism.


2020 ◽  
pp. 240-258
Author(s):  
Mary E. Sommar

This is the story of how the church sought to establish norms for slave ownership on the part of ecclesiastical institutions and personnel and for others’ behavior toward such slaves. Chronicles, letters, and other documents from each of the various historical periods, along with an analysis of the various policies and statutes, provide insight into the situations of these unfree ecclesiastical dependents. Although this book is a serious scholarly monograph about the history of church law, it has been written in such a way that no specialist knowledge is required of the reader, whether a scholar in another field or a general reader interested in church history or the history of slavery. Historical background is provided, and there is a short Latin lexicon. This chapter summarizes the conclusions drawn in earlier chapters and provides a brief overview of the question of ecclesiastical servitude up to the twentieth century.


2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 434-454
Author(s):  
Dan D. Cruickshank

This article uses the history of the Ornaments Rubric in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to explore the emergence of claims to self-governance within the Church of England in this period and the attempts by parliament to examine how independent the legal system of the church was from the secular state. First, it gives an overview of the history of the Ornaments Rubric in the various editions of the Book of Common Prayer and the Acts of Uniformity, presenting the legal uncertainty left by centuries of Prayer Book revision. It then explores how the Royal Commission into Ritualism (1867–70) and the Public Worship Regulation Act (1874) attempted to control Ritualist interpretations of the Ornaments Rubric through secular courts. Examining the failure of these attempts, it looks towards the Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline (1904–6). Through the evidence given to the commission, it shows how the previous royal commission and the work of parliament and the courts had failed to stop the continuation of Ritualist belief in the church's independence from secular courts. Using the report of the royal commission, it shows how the commissioners attempted to build a via media between strict spiritual independence and complete parliamentary oversight.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 316-333
Author(s):  
Jonathan Kangwa

The history of Christianity in Africa contains selected information reflecting patriarchal preoccupations. Historians have often downplayed the contributions of significant women, both European and indigenous African. The names of some significant women are given without details of their contribution to the growth of Christianity in Africa. This article considers the contributions of Peggy Hiscock to the growth of Christianity in Zambia. Hiscock was a White missionary who was sent to serve in Zambia by the Methodist Church in Britain. She was the first woman to have been ordained in the United Church of Zambia. Hiscock established the Order of Diaconal Ministry and founded a school for the training of deaconesses in the United Church of Zambia. This article argues that although the nineteenth- and twentieth-century missionary movement in Africa is associated with patriarchy and European imperialism, there were European women missionaries who resisted imperialism and patriarchy both in the Church and society.


2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (1 (241)) ◽  
pp. 79-98
Author(s):  
Tomasz Jacek Lis

The Possibility of Utilizing Missionaries’ Correspondence to Study the History of Peasant Migration (from the territories of former Polish Commonwealth) at the turn of the twentieth century The article presents new possibilities of research on the history of migration at the turn the 20th century using narrative sources, particularly the correspondence of missionaries. Peasants produced and left behind very few narrative sources, which results in migration historians rarely using them. The author indicates how to use alternative narrative sources produced by people of the Church to study the history of migration, in particular emigration from the territories of the former Polish Commonwealth.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-313
Author(s):  
Laura Chevalier

Abstract This article plumbs the spiritual life writing of two twentieth-century single female evangelical missionaries, Lillian Trasher and Dr. Helen Roseveare, for evidence of the church. It rests on concepts of feminine spirituality and the history of women and mission. The historical analysis traces the women’s lives from their early formation through their mission work and looks at six themes of the church on mission that emerged from their writing. It argues that they served as mamas of the church in their contexts by nurturing life through their acts of compassionate care. Their small but deliberate acts of sacrifice and service continue to pose missiological invitations and challenges to the church. Therefore, the article also builds an initial “mama theology” of the church on mission by examining where images in Isaiah and impulses in mission today intersect with the themes in the women’s writing.


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