Identity

This chapter focuses on the divide between Christian traditions that understand “this is my body” as true in the proper sense (what George Hunsinger calls “real predication”) and those that do not. It traces the development of this divide to the Western eucharistic controversies of the sixteenth century. The author argues that both Roman Catholics and Lutherans (on one side) and Swiss Reformers and the Radical Reformation (on the other) shared an assumption that language must be either literal or figurative, with only the former adequate for proper truth claims. The author also analyzes the eucharistic controversy between Luther, who understood “is” as an example of literal predication, and Zwingli, who saw it as a rhetorical trope and thus not properly true. The chapter concludes by arguing that a cognitive understanding of language can transcend this dichotomy since figurative language can indeed be capable of proper truth claims.

Officership in the Salvation Army : a Case Study in Clericalisation

<p>This thesis attempts an historical review and analysis of Salvation Army ministry in terms of the tension between function and status, between the view that members of the church differ only in that they have distinct roles, and the tradition that some enjoy a particular status, some ontological character, by virtue of their ordination to one of those roles in particular. This dichotomy developed early in the life of the Church and can be traced throughout its history. Jesus and his community appear to have valued equality in contrast to the priestly hierarchies of received religion. There were varieties of function within the early Christian community, but perhaps not at first of status. Over the first two or three centuries the Church developed such distinctions, between those "ordained" to "orders" and the "laity", as it accommodated to Roman society and to traditional religious expectations, and developed structures to defend its doctrinal integrity. While most renewal movements in the Church from Montanism onwards have involved a degree of lay reaction against this institutionalisation, clericalism has always regained the ascendancy. The Christian Mission, originating in 1865 and becoming The Salvation Army in 1878, began as a "lay" movement and was not intended to become a "Church". By the death of its Founder in 1912 however it had in practice become a denominational church in all but name and its officers had in effect become clergy. At the same time it continued to maintain the theory that it was not a church. The first three chapters explore this development, and the ambiguity that this uncertainty built into its understanding of ministry. In the Army's second century it began to become more theologically aware and the tension between the incompatible poles of its self-understanding led to prolonged debate. This debate is followed firstly through published articles and correspondence mainly from the period 1960-2000, and then in the official statements produced by the organisation. Separate chapters attend to the way in which this polarity was expressed in discussion of the roles of women and of auxiliary officers and soldiers of the Army. The culmination of this period of exploration came with the setting up of an International Commission on Officership and subsequent adjustments to the Army's regulations. The conclusion argued however that these changes have not addressed the underlying tensions in the movement's ecclesiology, between the "radical reformation" roots of its theology and the hierarchical shape of its ecclesiology, and attempts to explore future possibilities for the Army's theology of ministry. In retrospect it may be seen that The Salvation Army recapitulates in microcosm the historical and sociological processes of the Church as a whole, its history illustrating the way in which pragmatic measures become entrenched dogma, while charismatic revivals and alternative communities are reabsorbed into the structures of power and control.</p>

Officership in the Salvation Army : a Case Study in Clericalisation

<p>This thesis attempts an historical review and analysis of Salvation Army ministry in terms of the tension between function and status, between the view that members of the church differ only in that they have distinct roles, and the tradition that some enjoy a particular status, some ontological character, by virtue of their ordination to one of those roles in particular. This dichotomy developed early in the life of the Church and can be traced throughout its history. Jesus and his community appear to have valued equality in contrast to the priestly hierarchies of received religion. There were varieties of function within the early Christian community, but perhaps not at first of status. Over the first two or three centuries the Church developed such distinctions, between those "ordained" to "orders" and the "laity", as it accommodated to Roman society and to traditional religious expectations, and developed structures to defend its doctrinal integrity. While most renewal movements in the Church from Montanism onwards have involved a degree of lay reaction against this institutionalisation, clericalism has always regained the ascendancy. The Christian Mission, originating in 1865 and becoming The Salvation Army in 1878, began as a "lay" movement and was not intended to become a "Church". By the death of its Founder in 1912 however it had in practice become a denominational church in all but name and its officers had in effect become clergy. At the same time it continued to maintain the theory that it was not a church. The first three chapters explore this development, and the ambiguity that this uncertainty built into its understanding of ministry. In the Army's second century it began to become more theologically aware and the tension between the incompatible poles of its self-understanding led to prolonged debate. This debate is followed firstly through published articles and correspondence mainly from the period 1960-2000, and then in the official statements produced by the organisation. Separate chapters attend to the way in which this polarity was expressed in discussion of the roles of women and of auxiliary officers and soldiers of the Army. The culmination of this period of exploration came with the setting up of an International Commission on Officership and subsequent adjustments to the Army's regulations. The conclusion argued however that these changes have not addressed the underlying tensions in the movement's ecclesiology, between the "radical reformation" roots of its theology and the hierarchical shape of its ecclesiology, and attempts to explore future possibilities for the Army's theology of ministry. In retrospect it may be seen that The Salvation Army recapitulates in microcosm the historical and sociological processes of the Church as a whole, its history illustrating the way in which pragmatic measures become entrenched dogma, while charismatic revivals and alternative communities are reabsorbed into the structures of power and control.</p>

The Radical Reformation, Paracelsian Networks, and Pseudo-Weigelian Alchemy

This chapter sketches theological and intellectual developments of the Reformation era that allowed rebirth to emerge as something distinct from baptism, after which it proceeds to show how rebirth came to be strongly associated with alchemy. Drawing on the legacy of Paracelsus, the spiritualist theologies of Caspar Schwenckfeld and Valentin Weigel sharply contrasted inward rebirth with the outward ritual of baptism. Particularly Weigel and his followers departed from the conception of forensic justification dominant in Lutheran orthodoxy. They posited rebirth as an alternative account of how believers could attain salvation. Pseudepigraphic texts attributed to Weigel first closely associated this understanding of rebirth with alchemy in the late sixteenth century.

Moving Encounters With Spatial Racism: Walking in San Jose Japantown

In this article, I address how walking as a curatorial practice of storying a neighborhood facilitates an irreducible politics of place occurring as affective intensities at various registers, where everyday movements entangle with spatial enactments of racism. Working with theories of assemblage and immanent movement, I examine walking narratives in San Jose Japantown, California (U.S.), a historic, ethnic neighborhood historically subjected to U.S. government and banking practices of “redlining” and Japanese American incarceration and dislocation to prison camps. As an analytical method, assemblage requires attention to movement: material elements of arrangement, the relations they require, new arranging and arrangements they might enable, and how these arrangements are legitimated. I examine spatial racism as an assemblage, analyzing its affective qualities wherein attentiveness to immanent movement might breach the assemblage and, in doing so, reach toward radical reformation through memorialization, community activism and development.

From “the Radical Reformation” to “the Radical Enlightenment”?

This Special Issue arises from a symposium held at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in July 2019. That symposium was part of the “Amsterdamnified” research program funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2015–2022). In this essay, the editors introduce the scope and themes of the Special Issue, provide a brief historical overview of some key aspects of sixteenth-century Protestant spiritualism, outline a series of historiographical questions that are important for this subject’s past and ongoing study, and highlight how the essays that follow relate to these questions and to one another.

The Bohemian Brethren and the Protestant Reformation

The smallest, but in some ways the most influential, church to emerge from the Hussite Reformation was the Unity of the Brethren founded by Gregory the Patriarch in 1457. The Unity was a voluntary church that separated entirely from the established churches, and chose its own priests, published the first Protestant hymnal and catechism, and operated several schools. Soon after Martin Luther broke with Rome, the Brethren established cordial relations with Wittenberg and introduced their irenic and ecumenical theology to the Protestant Reformation. Over time, they gravitated more toward the Reformed tradition, and influenced Martin Bucer’s views on confirmation, church discipline, and the Eucharist. In many ways, the pacifist Brethren offered a middle way between the Magisterial Reformation and the Radical Reformation. Study of the Brethren complicates and enhances our understanding of the Protestant Reformation and the rise of religious toleration in Europe.

Justice for Judges in Ukraine: Looking for Peace and Strong Judiciary Institutions in a Sustainable Society

Regarding the judiciary, the purification and lustration initiatives had been alleged as a beginning of a new stage of radical reformation, appreciated by European institutions. Therefore, in this article we will provide a detailed picture of the lustration of judges in Ukraine from the angle of its procedural guarantees as well as its legal nature; a special focus will be given to issues of efficiency of lustration restrictions, provided by the national legislation as well as its compliance within the European guidelines and Ukrainian Constitution. Lustration of judges will be analyzed regarding ordinary sanctions, enforced upon judges in case of committing disciplinary offences.

Institution and Abyss

This paper reflects on the relationship between institution and abyss, specifically the contingency of the elaboration of law’s institutional form upon the inaccessible and unspeakable otherness posited to lie beyond the realm of presence. It does this by bringing together Cotter’s enigmatic comics work Nod Away, Legendre’s psychoanalytic jurisprudence of institutional foundations in God in the Mirror, and Lovecraft’s nominally fictional case studies of the limits of representation. In undertaking this analysis, Cotter’s work is read as an example of a horrific jurisprudence that seeks to progressively reformulate our relationship with the imagined beyond. Nod Away—and horrific jurisprudence as a project—thus provides a conceptual method through which the founding conditions of law’s institutional appearance can be accessed, examined, and opened to the potential for radical reformation.