Family Man

Chapter 5 discusses how Franklin was not a model husband or father, though he dutifully provided for his wife, Deborah Read Franklin, and his three children (Francis and Sarah with Deborah and William, from a previous relationship). He flirted with a number of other women throughout his long life. But Franklin recognized the importance of marriage to civil society and wrote about it for humorous and serious purposes under another alias in his newspaper. His aliases included Anthony Afterwit. He also affirmed the equality of women in ways that were untypical of his time. Although Franklin was unconventional in his roles as husband and father, he was swimming in domestic currents that Protestantism had prompted with its reform of marriage as a secular institution.

Through the eyes of the Potala Palace: Difficult heritage and memory in Tibet

The Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet serves as an important religious symbol and an embodiment of Tibetan culture. Ever since Chinese troops invaded Tibet in the 1950s, the Chinese government has attempted to control Tibet, including converting the Potala Palace and its rich material culture into a secular institution on display for tourists. Now void of the Dalai Lama and most of its contents, the Potala has become a façade for public consumption of Chinese state-led narratives and a symbol of cultural oppression. Through their approaches to heritage management and tourism, and with the aid of the Potala’s listing as a UNESCO World Heritage site, China is capitalizing on Tibet’s cultural heritage, undermining the Tibetan people and their culture, and controlling the narrative of Tibetan history to alter the collective memory of Tibetans.

Creating the Creation Museum

The typical story about creationist social movements centers on battles in the classroom or in the courtroom—like the Scopes Trial in 1925. But there is a new setting: a museum. “Prepare to Believe” is the slogan that greets visitors throughout the Creation Museum located in Petersburg, Kentucky. It carries the message that the organization Answers in Genesis (AiG) uses to welcome fellow believers as well as skeptics since opening in 2007. The Creation Museum seeks to persuade visitors that if one views both the Bible (a close, literal reading) and nature (observational, real world data) as sources of authority, then the earth appears to be much younger than conventionally understood in mainstream society. This book argues that the impact of the Creation Museum does not depend on the accuracy or credibility of its scientific claims, as many scholars, media critics, and political pundits would suggest. Instead, what AiG goes after by creating a physical site like the Creation Museum is the ability to foster plausibility politics—broadening what the audience perceives as possible and amplifying the stakes as the ideas reach more people. Destabilizing the belief that only one type of secular institution may make claims about the age of the earth and human origins, the Creation Museum is a threat to this singular positioning. In doing so, AiG repositions itself to produce longstanding effects on the public’s perception of who may make scientific claims. Creating the Creation Museum is a story about how a group endures.

Religion-Making in the Disney Feature Film, Frozen II: Indigenous Religion and Dynamics of Agency

This paper explores the religion-making potential of a particular secular institution, namely the Walt Disney Studios. Focusing on the animation film Frozen II that was launched in November 2019, the current article enters into debates about the manner in which indigenous religion is part of the commodity presented—how religion is produced, packaged, and staged. In the article I argue that contemporary media-scapes can be seen as agents of religion-making, of religious circulation, and renewal. As such, religion, as it is expressed in Frozen II, is outlined and produced by a particular media-form and shaped as a popular cultural formation. Further discussions about cultural appropriation are highlighted, focusing on how Disney’s reach out for cooperation with the Sámi community can generate new cultural policies and practices.

The System of Views on the Orthodox Church of the Participants in “Religious-Philosophical Meetings” (1901–1903)

The purpose of the article is to identify and analyze ecclesiology, the doctrine of the Church, offered by the participants of Religious and philosophical meetings (1901–1903) from the “party” of the intelligentsia (Ternavtsev, Merezhkovsky, Rozanov, Philosofov, Minsky, Romanov), as well as to show its secular and political nature. This ecclesiology contained the following provisions: change in Christian dogma was declared possible; the Church was differentiated as “historical” and “mystical”; the main flaw of the “historical” Church being that it preached only the heavenly and ignored the worldly ideals; the worldly principles were declared autonomous and equal to the divine principles; the intelligentsia proposed the way of Christianizing the world and returning the Church to its “fullness”, in which not the world approached the Church, but the Church approached the world and became a worldly, secular institution; the secularization of the Church in this context meant the introduction of Protestant and pagan elements into the Christian doctrine.

Science-religion compatibility beliefs across Middle Eastern and American young adult samples: The role of cross-cultural exposure

Research shows that people in predominantly Christian cultures tend to perceive a basic tension between science and religion, which is not reflected in predominantly Muslim cultures. In this cross-cultural study comparing Christian university students in the United States and Muslim university students in the United Arab Emirates, we examined time spent in Western countries (for UAE students) or overseas (for American students) as predictors of perceived religion-science compatibility. Drawing upon the notion that science is viewed as more secular in Christianity than in Islam, we hypothesized and found that among UAE students, number of weeks per year spent in the West correlated negatively with religion-science compatibility beliefs. This relationship held even when controlling for science knowledge, suggesting that it results not from epistemological opposition to science but from an increasing exposure to the idea that science should be seen as a secular institution. Among American students, number of weeks per year spent overseas and religion-science compatibility beliefs were not associated. Implications for perceptions of science among different religious groups and in different cultural contexts are discussed.

Waqf and trust: the nature, structures and socio-economic impacts

Purpose This paper aims to compare and contrast the concept, mechanism and functions of the two socio-economic institutions, i.e. waqf (Islamic trust) and English trust. It endeavours to juxtapose the salient features of waqf and trust with an objective to examine the nature of similarities and dissimilarities between the two institutions. Design/methodology/approach This paper applies the socio-legal research methodology and uses qualitative paradigm to analyse the literature. The paper is based on a desk-based research. Findings This paper finds that there is nothing intrinsically rigid in the jurisprudential paradigm of waqf which might impinge upon either the efficiency or effectiveness of the waqf vis-à-vis trust. The main findings of the paper are encapsulated in underlining certain Shariah principles which essentially hold waqf from transforming into a trust-like secular institution. Research limitations/implications This paper compares the jurisprudential underpinnings and conceptual frameworks of waqf and trust, and it does not evaluate their efficiency or effectiveness in empirical terms. The underlying socio-economic efficiency and impacts of the two institutions can be examined empirically in separate comparative case studies. Practical implications This paper examines and critically analyses the different socio-economic implications that waqf and trust entail for the societies in which they function. This analysis is important for the policy recommendations towards protecting the religious identity of waqf while re-structuring its models. Originality/value The main contribution of the paper is encapsulated in the critical analysis of how the paradigms of the two institutions, i.e. waqf and trust, which appear similar in form but differ in the substance, are shaped and governed.

ETIKETAS IR BUITIS REFORMUOTOJE XVIII A. ANTROSIOS PUSĖS LIETUVOS DIDŽIOSIOS KUNIGAIKŠTYSTĖS PIJORŲ EDUKACIJOJE: LYGINAMASIS TYRIMAS

The Regulation of the Lithuanian Piarists for provincial education Methodus docendi pro Scholis Piis provinciae Litvaniae (Vilnius, 1762) should be considered as the main document showing the changes in education of the Enlightenment era, announced prior to the establishment of the Board of Education, a secular institution of education. That is an important source of the Lithuanian science history of the 18th century, opening a relevant contextual panorama of cultural processes, illustrating the intersection of the values of the Baroque and the Enlightenment. The study Methodus docendi pro Scholis Piis provinciae Litvaniae deals with the specifics of daily routines which shows obvious following of Ordinationes Visitationis Apostolicae (Warsaw, 1753 [1754]–1755) prepared by Stanisław Konarski. As it can be noticed, many of the aspects of the school routine (such as the necessity to start lessons in time and not waste the time for frivolous talking, relationship between the students and teachers, personal hygiene, proper physical condition, behaviour of students at school and outside it) in the Regulations for provinces of Lithuania are defined much more laconically. The attitude to go ad rem was determined by the goal to have a document with the scope and precise presentation of the subject which could be smoothly used in daily practice. On the other hand, the differences, such as elimination of the paragraph on temperance (not mentioning the whole chapter), shows that the Lithuanian adaptation was not word-for-word (or mind) following and that only the issues that were really significant for the developers were taken over. The actualisation of the daily posture shows the efforts of the Piarists monkhood to respond to the changes of the time, to implement the principles of education covering the overall upbringing of a person. Keywords: Piarists, etiquette, household routine, teacher, student, drinking, Enlightenment, Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the 18th century).

Correcting Rome with Rome

Victor Hugo’s Quatrevingt-treize, this chapter argues, uses a classicizing allusive technique to set different models of Rome against each other, so that each corrects the flaws or errors of the other. Vergilian refoundation counteracts Lucan’s perpetual civil war. Augustine’s Civitas Dei counteracts the fruitlessness of suicide and promises to bring closure to the perennial cycle of refoundation and collapse. But the Roman Church, for Hugo, has failed to live up to the promise of Christianity and classical Rome offers literature itself as the secular institution that will bring Hugo’s progressive vision to fruition. Quatrevingt-treize presents every model of Rome as flawed, but Roman models offer the very framework for combating the Roman inheritance. Could such a dialectical reception of Roman antiquity, this chapter asks, in fact be a “better” way—even the “right” way—to practice reception?

Observation versus experimentation in natural-history teaching in Portuguese secondary schools: educational laws from 1836 to 1933

The idea that a public and secular institution was needed to prepare citizens for higher education proliferated throughout Europe during the nineteenth century. However, because of local political, economic and social contexts the underlying model of what is now meant by secondary education has developed differently in each country. This essay provides a historical account of the development of secondary education in Portugal, in what concerns the study of nature (zoology, botany, geology and mineralogy) inliceus, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, the importance given to specimens and collections will be emphasized. The emergence of laboratory-based teaching never replaced traditional approaches centred on observation of specimens. By focusing on the Portuguese case, this article aims ultimately to contribute to a broader understanding of the secondary-educational model implemented throughout Europe in the nineteenth century.