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This paper aims to uncover a hidden history of Cantonese Christian literature. Written Cantonese has been present since the late Ming dynasty in parallel to the emergence of a distinct Cantonese identity. Western missionaries, for the sake of evangelism, facilitated the development of written Cantonese in South China since the mid-nineteenth century. At that time, missionaries put a lot of effort into translating religious leaflets and booklets, the Bible, the book of prayers, and even Cantonese–English dictionaries. These works contributed to standardizing written Cantonese and indirectly helped to develop Cantonese identity. I will critically examine how Cantonese Christian literature declined for the sake of nationalism, as the first publication of Heheben 和合本 (Mandarin Union Version) in Protestant Christianity in 1919 represented the unification of the Church by using written Mandarin. After elaborating on the unintentional alliance of missionaries with Cantonese in the nineteenth century, in conclusion, I will make a brief comparison of Hong Kong Church in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, which is inactive in the continuous written Cantonese movement in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the auto/biographies of high-caste middle-class Punjabi Khatri men, and those of cognate castes like Arora and Baniya, written in the first half of the twentieth century: men who were born in the second half of the nineteenth century or early twentieth century. While the discourse on caste under the colonial regime exploded, there was also an embarrassment about caste, or re-thinking its place in society among the upper-caste groups who invested in ideas of progress, improvement and scientism. It is argued that caste was referenced in the memoirs, life stories and self-reflexive writing when these men spoke of their familial backgrounds and admired the deep religiosity and devotionalism of their fathers even though some paternal practices were incongruent with the reformism of the sons. Caste is also in play when one traces the advantages of literacy, education, professional accomplishments, mobility, and reformist activities of men who came to have an important presence in public life. A number of these men had similar life trajectories, indicative of how some aspects of colonial educational and administrative structures could be utilized by them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has played a pivotal role in advancing our understanding of cloisonné enamel production in China during the 19th and 20th centuries. However, Christian workshops, whether operating under missionary subcontracting or owned by the Catholic Church, have yet to be accurately identified and contextualized. This article delves into three significant contexts. Firstly, it identifies and contextualizes the Christian connections and interactions of the Decheng private cloisonné workshop, involving the French Lazarist Bishop Alphonse Favier, in Beijing. Secondly, it identifies the cloisonné workshop stablished by the Lazarists in the Beitang complex in Beijing and elucidates the role it played. Finally, this paper presents new evidence concerning cloisonné Christian objects crafted by the Tushanwan Jesuit workshop in Shanghai. Some of the primary works of these three workshops are identified for the first time. Additionally, this paper shows that certain cloisonné crosses, some of them thought to be originally Japanese, including those referred to as Namban, were, in fact, crafted in Beijing during the 1920s. These preliminary results will contribute to placing Chinese Christian cloisonné within the history of Chinese Art and its interactions at a global level in the context of evangelization in China, the production of the so-called export art, and the processes of indigenization carried out by the Lazarists and the Jesuits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When it comes to relations between Thailand (Siam) and Sri Lanka (Ceylon), the Buddhist connections between the two countries are often discussed and are highly valued. Communications between Thai and Sinhalese monks can be traced back to the 13th century: the Sukhothai era. These communications were then continuously maintained in the Ayutthaya era and have been up until the present day. Despite being situated far from each other and being separated by the sea, the people in these countries have been interacting through maritime routes and cooperating with each other regarding religious, cultural, financial, diplomatic, and political matters for centuries. The continuous interactions between the two came to a halt in the 18th century due to political instability in both countries. Only in the middle of the 19th century did Buddhists from the two countries resume their travels and interactions, rebuilding their bilateral relations and cooperation. There are very few studies that provide information regarding the religious cooperation between Siam and Ceylon in the 19th century. Religious cooperation between the two countries in the 19th Century has never been thoroughly studied and presented in detail. The purpose of the research paper is to investigate how Buddhists in these two countries cooperated with each other to achieve continuity and solidarity in Theravada Buddhism in both countries. We will address this question by analyzing the available data, which can mainly be found in the form of letters written in the Pāli language exchanged between Buddhists in the two countries. These letters have been published in Pālisandesāvalī in Sri Lanka and in Samaṇasāsana in Thailand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christianity is the main religion in the Pacific Islands, and what is unique about Christianity in the Pacific is that religion cannot be separated from everyday life experiences. This is because the worship and veneration of a divine source is the foundation of Pacific cultures and worldviews. In the Samoan context, faith in the Christian God is not only a rational activity but a concrete, practical experience embracing the physical and emotional manifestation of one's faith in God. This essay is a contextual theology paper examining the significance of applying authentic expressions of the gospel from a Samoan cultural worldview while acknowledging Christian traditions passed down by Western missionaries of the 19th century. Faith in God, without good works, is impossible in the Samoan context. This is because service to God and one another is imperative to social cohesion and prosperity. The physical manifestation of one's faith through active, committed service to the church ministry is a sign of good faith, evident through excessive monetary offerings, responsibility for fulfilling specific roles in the ministry and a commitment to all church programs. The Samoan cultural nuance of community and service helps form an authentic expression of Samoan Christian identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the origin and role of the Buddhist taxonomic category "zong 宗" ("sect" or "school") in the formation of modern Buddhism in China. It does so by examining a highly significant late-Qing Buddhist text titled Ba-zong-er-xing 八宗二行 (Eight Schools and Two Practices), which the author discovered recently in Japan. Authored by the 19th-century Manchu bannerman official Hešeri Rushan 赫舍裏如山, Eight Schools and Two Practices had a direct influence on the prominent Chinese lay Buddhist Yang Wenhui (1837–1911)'s Shi-zong-lue-shuo 十宗略说 (Brief Outline of the Ten Schools) (1913), which subsequently became the most important narrative model, known as the ten-school model, for describing Chinese Buddhist history in modern times. Historians have long recognized that Yang Wenhui's Brief Outline of the Ten Schools (1913) was influenced by the medieval Japanese text hasshū kōyō 八宗綱要 (Essentials of the Eight Schools) composed by the 13th-century Japanese monk Gyōnen. Identifying, in detail, Hešeri Rushan's influence on Yang Wenhui sheds light on how a narrative model for Buddhism in its national form grew out of trans-national intellectual sharing and interactions, and how Chinese Buddhism emerged from the interactive and mutually enabling Sino-Japanese discursive field of the 19th century. Gyōnen, Rushan, and Yang Wenhui all used the category zong, referring to both doctrine and school/sect, to organize narratives of Buddhist history. Their uses were, however, different. Gyōnen's conception of zong (shū in Japanese) was fixed and exclusive, whereas zong for Rushan and Yang meant more of a mobile, nonexclusive identity. Without knowledge of Japanese Buddhism, Rushan made creative use of zong for describing the history and current condition of Chinese Buddhism, thereby superseding the traditional framework of lineage, doctrine, and precept, or zong 宗, jiao 教, lu 律. Rushan's zong provided the necessary prerequisite knowledge for Yang Wenhui to understand Gyōnen's theories, which he studied for constructing his own historical narrative and vision for modern Buddhism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, my objective is to delve into the history of women accused of practicing witchcraft in Sicily during the early modern period. This investigation draws upon documented evidence from the Spanish Inquisition spanning from 1516 to 1782, along with archival records and the ethnographic works of nineteenth-century scholars. The focal point of my research is the enigmatic figure known as donna de fora (the ladies from outside) in the Italian context. To illuminate this subject, I employ an analysis of seventeenth-century Inquisition trial records and oral traditions documented by anthropologist Giuseppe Pitrè in the late nineteenth century. The donne de fora represent a distinctive and intriguing group as this term appears exclusively within the Inquisitorial records of Sicily. They were perceived as supernatural entities, characterized as "part witches, part fairies". According to beliefs of the time, these women's spirits would depart from their bodies during sleep to convene with higher-ranking fairies. Notably, the trials and the Edict of the Diocese of Girgenti (Agrigento) in 1656 document that the most significant gatherings of these figures occurred during the night of Saint John, between the 23rd and 24th of June. Through an examination of trial records, we gain insights into how these women were perceived by their contemporaries, as well as an understanding of their societal roles and the ritual practices they engaged in. Moving forward to the late nineteenth century, ethnologist Giuseppe Pitrè conducted a comprehensive study of local rituals and popular folklore, and he collected various objects and documents related to supernatural beliefs, including those associated with the donne de fora in the regions around Palermo. My research is centered on archival records containing Pitrè's notes, unpublished drafts, and correspondence with scholars in Italy and Europe discussing this phenomenon. Based on my findings, I aim to establish a connection between Pitrè's material discoveries and contemporary beliefs regarding donne de fora and witchcraft in Sicily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James Legge (1815–1897), arguably the most prominent missionary sinologist in the nineteenth century and the founding Professor of Chinese in Oxford in 1876, produced an English translation of the Yijing (Book of Changes), the prominent Chinese classic, in 1882. This translation was included in Max Müller's monumental Sacred Books of the East series. While existing scholarship has outlined some background and features of Legge's Yijing translation, this version deserves more in-depth textual analysis to unearth Legge's primary sources of reference and theological positions behind his interpretive approach. Perceiving the Yijing as a Confucian classic with profound moralistic connotations, Legge even revered it as a "sacred book" containing certain elements of divine revelation. He asserted that the Chinese term Shangdi (Supreme Ruler) referred to the Christian God, insisting that "God" was the "correct" translation of Shangdi, and that the operations of nature in the different seasons are the work of Shangdi. This paper examines Legge's pioneering attempt of translating the Yijing to the West, with special reference to his religious interpretation of the seminal Chinese classic. This endeavor engendered profound inter-religious encounters and dialogues between Confucianism and Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been nearly 200 years since the Daodejing and Daoist thought was first introduced to Russia in the first half of the 19th century. Although the study of Daoist philosophy and Laozi in Russia started relatively late, the Daodejing has been the most translated classic of Chinese culture in Russia. The early dissemination of the Daodejing in Russia was deeply influenced by the government and religion, and there were some controversial and neglected materials that were difficult to verify due to the lack of documents and manuscripts. For example, the first translation manuscript of the Daodejing in Russia has almost become a rare book that is nearly impossible to find and inconvenient to read; the authorship of the first article introducing Laozi's thought in Russia remains a mystery; the first complete translation was completed by a Japanese theologian living in Russia, but it has not received enough research attention. The insufficient research on the early dissemination of Laozi studies in Russia has had a negative impact on the studies of Laozi in Russia. Therefore, this paper, on the basis of various documentary and manuscript references, aims to conduct an in-depth analysis of the early dissemination of Laozi studies in Russia, paying particular attention to the three early Russian documents in the 19th century about the Daodejing, namely, the first translation manuscript of the Daodejing, the first article introducing Laozi's thought in Russia, and the first complete Russian translation of the Daodejing. A detailed review of these three documents can help to correct some misconceptions and misunderstandings of the early dissemination of the Daodejing in Russia, and, to some extent, reveal the early dissemination characteristics of Laozi studies in Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human dignity, in the Protestant traditions, was generally formulated in reaction to Catholicism. Initial assessments of human dignity were less than enthusiastic and framed soteriologically and contingent on God's saving grace. In contrast, by the middle of the 19th century, human dignity in Protestant theology emerged as a positive anthropological affirmation with significant political consequences. To illuminate this evolution within the Protestant world, this paper provides a narrative sketch that: (1) orients initial notions of human dignity with reference to the ambiguous legacy of Martin Luther; (2) describes how substantial engagements with minority or marginalized populations in the 19th and 20th centuries around the world—including South Africa, India, and the USA—led to a revision and expansion of human dignity; and (3) exhibits the affirmation of a robust understanding of human dignity in Protestant traditions around the world. The argument is both (a) expansive because it highlights developments toward the positive embrace of human dignity across a wide geographic range while also remaining (b) limited because it merely argues that the Protestant traditions universally affirm human dignity, while also acknowledging that frequently there are limits to the performance of that affirmation based on matters of race, nationality, class, and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the concept of New Age healing. Its emergence into popular culture in the 1980s can be traced to burgeoning interest in human potential and holistic health in the 1960s and 1970s. These phenomena in turn, were rooted in the appearance of Theosophy, New Thought, and spiritualism in the 19th Century. Rather than a social movement, or even a singular phenomenon, the New Age is characterized as a hodgepodge of several elements with a characteristic inclination to borrow beliefs and practices from the other traditions and systems of belief and practice. These include mysticism, esoteric metaphysics, the occult, and self-actualization regimens. The rise of New Age healing has sparked converging conservative religious, secular-rationalist, and biomedical critiques of the phenomenon. Since the 1990s, the New Age label has mostly disappeared from popular usage, but associated beliefs and practices have been successful in seeding themselves into contemporary Western medicine and mainline religion, with implications for their intersection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Setting out from Okakura Kakuzō and Ernest Fenollosa's famous "discovery" of the Yumedono Kannon, this article will trace the contested construction of the categories of "religion" (shūkyō) and "fine art" (bijutsu) in Meiji Japan. In religious studies circles, it has become commonplace to think of "religion" as the only disciplinary master category with issues. However, not only was "religion" invented in Japan, but "fine art" was invented there too. Indeed, categories from "culture" to "society" to "politics" have similar issues. Attending to these will help refocus crucial debates away from an obsession with translation and onto more fundamental issues about "cultural categories" as such. This paper will advance the debate by explaining the attendant constructions of "religion" and "fine art" as process social kinds. In doing so, it will showcase the museum and the temple as central sites of materialized disputation over global categories and their local instantiation. It will show how assimilation to the world-system in the long nineteenth century was a complex multi-generational process of negotiation and contestation, producing new hybrid spaces, returns, transformations, and innovations that then reflected back on global systems, changing them in subtle but profound ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mi'raj, or ascension of the Prophet Muhammad to heaven, has received a great deal of attention on the part of Islamic scholars and writers, who expanded upon a short Qur'anic passage and communicated their understanding of this episode. Nineteenth century religious leaders associated with the the Shaykhī, Bābī, and Bahā'ī movements continued the practice of commenting on the mi'rāj. Rather than communicating fixed ideas about the meaning of the mi'raj, their writings reflect the contexts in which they were composed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "multiple secularities" framework may be regarded as a recent ambitious contribution to the comparative analysis of secularisms across Western and non-Western societies. While I argue in this article for the "historicization" of secularities as proposed by the framework, I also point out the latter's lack of empirical attention to the subjective dimension of historical secularities. More specifically, the article attempts to show the theoretical relevance of analyzing historical secularities in post-colonial societies from the perspective of the subjects and their complex selves. Through a genealogical analysis of the subjectivities of three influential positivist intellectuals in 19th-century Mexico, I argue that the analytical axes of the multiple secularities framework may be refined and broadened. I discuss how the framework's search for local forms of "conceptual distinctions" should be complemented by the search for conceptual erasures and how the analysis of "semantic hybridity" should be broadened and include the analysis of experiential and emotional forms of hybridizations. I also argue that the analyses of historical secularities should account for "sacred-secular" hybrids, as well as more specific hybridizations, such as ecclesiological–secular and theological–secular transpositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late nineteenth century, the Phrygian funerary imprecation, known as the Eumeneian formula, has been considered one of the clearest indicators of Christian religious identity on inscriptions from Roman Asia Minor. After a brief précis of the early scholarly history of interpretation of this formula and the historiographical assumptions which underpinned its identification as Christian, this article attempts to reframe how we understand the specific context out of which these inscriptions emerge—that of the wider socio-religious context of Roman Asia Minor—and to examine the degree of continuity which these inscriptions have in terms of religious sentiment with similar pagan examples from wider Anatolia. The central contention of this article is that the Eumeneian formula inscriptions, quite apart from what they can tell us about the socio-political status of early Christians and their relationships with their wider civic environment, are also an important index for understanding early Christian popular religion in the pre-Constantinian period and how ordinary Christians expressed their religious identity in a potentially hostile environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 19th century saw the important transformation of modern Western concepts into Chinese lexical resources. The missionaries were the initiators and important driving force for the translation of Western books into Chinese in modern China. They promoted 'translating terms' and 'coining terms' in their translations of Western books and the compilation of dictionaries with the cooperation of Chinese intellectuals. Their work provided a tangible 'word' carrier of 'concepts' for disseminating modern knowledge from the West to the East. Compiled by missionaries, the English–Chinese bilingual dictionaries introduced a brand-new concept of dictionary compilation and changed China's history of having zidian (字典, character dictionaries) but no cidian (辞典, specialized dictionaries). In particular, John Fryer applied the translation method of creating new words or characters in the translation of chemical terminology. Members of the School and Textbook Series Committee, including John Fryer and Calvin Wilson Mateer, made great contributions to theories and strategies for translation, which keep inspiring Chinese–English translation of terminology and its theoretical construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to show how Vincent van Gogh developed a theological reflection that is mainly present in his paintings with religious motifs. This reflection is the fruit of his religious experience, which combines his spirituality with a social commitment to the miners in Borinage, Belgium, which can be seen as an option for the poor avant la lettre in the 19th century. This experience, far from strengthening his institutional relationship, rather provoked a critical attitude towards the theological discourse of the ecclesial context in which he lived and led the aspiring pastor to become a genius in painting. His theological interpretation as a critical reader of the Bible can be translated into what will be called here a theological chromatology, to be identified through the intersection of letters and paintings of Vincent van Gogh. Given the influence of the Dutch painter genius on contemporary culture, the process through which his reflection on the religious and theological issue emerges can be seen as a significant element in understanding the present in post-secular societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the importance of faith in the Victorian historical novel, with a particular focus on George Eliot's Romola (1862–1863), and rethinks past secularist approaches to the genre. Romola was arguably the most meticulously researched historical novel of the nineteenth century. Set in Florence from 1492 to 1498, the novel traces the rise and fall of the Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, as he pursued the spiritual and political reform of the city, leading to his excommunication and martyrdom. Despite the religious setting of the novel, Eliot's painstaking effort to imagine a realistic historical representation of Florentine society has often been approached in secular terms as a tour de force of the author's humanist vision of a progressive march towards modernity. Building on recent work in postsecular studies, this essay rethinks the novel's historical realism in terms of Christian faith. Centering on the spiritual journey of the protagonist, Romola de' Bardi, the novel presents a faithful depiction of Renaissance Florence by imagining historical representation as an act of faith. Drawing on Jacques Derrida's essay, "Faith and Knowledge", the article analyzes how Eliot frames the significance of the novel's historical representation as an act of faith that one's life is bound meaningfully to those of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Friedrich Schleiermacher is often credited with playing a foundational role in the development of the modern concept of religion. His epoch-making Speeches on religion, published in 1799 amidst the widespread social and intellectual upheaval of the Sattelzeit, present a novel description of religious feeling and religious communication, which mark a turning away from the rationalistic treatments of religion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and which served as both inspiration and foil for scholars of religion throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This essay suggests a reading of Schleiermacher's Speeches that is organized around two interrelated claims. First, the text does not proceed as speculative philosophical treatise aiming to establish an overarching theory of religion but as a critical dialogue that inquires into the distinctive particularity of religion and religious expression. Second, religious piety, as depicted in the Speeches, is not found in the isolated inwardness of individual experience but in coordinated tension with sociality, in communications of religious feeling that are bound together with a living apprehension of the world. On this account, religion for Schleiermacher, though rooted in feeling and self-consciousness, is nonetheless no private affair; it is realized within the developing complex of social and historical living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, a large Subbotnik community established itself in the village of Privol'noe in the Lankaran district of Baku province in Southern Caucasus. By early 1909, however, the names of two small Subbotnik communities—both in the settlement of Petrovka, near Privol'noe—began to appear in the documents of the Baku province administration. While the Privol'noe community has been thoroughly studied, those of Petrovka remain largely unexplored. At their peak, Petrovka's two Subbotnik communities were divided, belonging to different Jewish streams, and segregated from each other. Based mainly on documents from the National Historical Archives of the Republic of Azerbaijan (NAHARA), this study uncovers these communities and compares their religious life with each other. It does so in the context of the Russo-Ottoman and Irano-Russian geopolitical rivalries in Southern Caucasus. The study explains how and which aspects of this struggle led Russia to originally establish communities like Petrovka at the start of the examined period. It further explores why Russia later lost interest in supporting the Petrovka communities by the end of said period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the appearance of Buddha, texts and images depicting his life have circulated across Eurasia, serving as significant mediums for disseminating Buddhist ideology. Japan has historically been influenced by the canon of Chinese Buddhism while concurrently striving to promote the indigenization of Buddhism. This endeavor reached its peak during the Edo period, notably exemplified in the Shaka goichidaiki zue, illustrated by the world-renowned artist Hokusai Katsushika. Originating from Buddhist believers, it presents an adaptation based on the socio-historical context of pre-modern Japan, particularly manifesting evident shifts in emphasizing royal authority, the salvation of females, and ethical relationships. Entering the Meiji era, this pre-modern illustrated manuscript underwent repeated printing, playing an important role in the modernization of Buddhism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Ukrainian folkloric parallels to Viy, a character in the horror novella of the same name by Nikolai Gogol. It is a formidable chthonic, demonic creature whose eyelids cover the eyes and need to be lifted, and the gaze sees what is hidden from others. Although the writer claimed that this character, like the entire plot of the story, was taken from Ukrainian folklore, some modern researchers claim that Viy is the author's own invention. This is contradicted by folkloric data, primarily Ukrainian lore. Demonic characters with different names but with the same appearance and very similar functions as Viy appear in Ukrainian folk tales, legends and beliefs recorded in the 19th and 20th centuries. The plots have various degrees of closeness to the plot of Gogol's story, showing that Viy is an authentic figure from Ukrainian folklore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research study examines Park Se-dang's Sinju Dodeokgyeong, which was the first complete exegesis of the Daodejing (DDJ) in Korea. This study investigates the theoretical strategies that Park used to interpret the DDJ from a Neo-Confucian perspective and also examines the logical missteps that Park took to force a unity between Neo-Confucianism and Daoism. The core method for interpreting the DDJ that Park utilized in his attempt to assert the compatibility of Neo-Confucianism and Daoism can be summarized as "interpreting Daoism through Neo-Confucian theory". This research study breaks down Park's strategy for reinterpreting the DDJ, dividing Park's argumentation into four parts: (1.) clarifying the historical hereticalization of the DDJ; (2.) identifying the ethics and treasured virtues of Confucianism and Daoism; (3.) the study of the cosmologies of Confucianism and Daoism; and (4.) interpreting Daoist moral ethics through Neo-Confucian cosmological theory. Park Se-dang's strategy for forcing unity between Neo-Confucianism and Daoism had its limits. Among other things, Park attempted but failed to narrow the gap between Confucian and Daoist ethics and cosmology by converting the concept of "heaven" in the DDJ into a humanized heaven. Eventually, even though Park's strategy failed, his work inspired other Silhak scholars of Joseon up to the 19th century and had a clear impact on the many subsequent reinterpretations of the DDJ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is to examine one of the neglected areas in the spatiality of religion, the spatial distribution of religious institutions and the changes that have taken place in this relation over time in the case of Debrecen, a specific city in Hungary, which has hosted several religions both in the past and present. The main findings are discussed in five subsections concentrating on five consecutive periods. During the period under study, the number of institutions run by churches increased steadily until the Second World War. This process was interrupted after the Second World War, and partly as a consequence of the world war (with the deportation of Jews to concentration camps) and partly due to the anti-religious nature of the socialist regime, there was a significant decline followed by a resumption of expansion after 1990. Regarding the location of the institutions within the city and its changes, there were significant differences between the various types of institutions (e.g., churches, administrative centres, kindergartens, elementary and grammar schools). Research primarily relied on document analysis and fieldwork. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on literary scholar Susan Ryan's work to show how Americans worked out national as well as racial identities through benevolent activity, including forms of reformative incarceration. Reformers operated as true citizens by sustaining themselves and providing for others. Recipients, on the other hand, functioned as people in need. Ryan argues that benevolent activists ascribed need to entire groups of people. As a result, "the categories of blackness, Indianness, and Irishness...came to signify need itself." Elite Americans thereby "raced" need, assigning essential difference to populations they sought to relieve. Ryan's work on racialized need can help us understand the connections between Christianity, race, and mass incarceration. I explore how one nineteenth-century military prison—and the disciplinary institutions later modeled on it—was created in direct response to presumed (and raced) need among Native Americans. I also consider how Christian reformers obscured and concealed the racialized nature of this institution—and how, in that avoidance, they came to sanctify mass incarceration for racial minorities. Finally, I look at two incarcerated Native artists' drawings to show how people caught up in racialized renderings of their need have something else to say about who they are and what prison is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread belief that music has some therapeutic potential rests partly on demonstrable, practical results. But explaining how such therapy works depends on the belief system of the explainer or practitioner. This survey of the literature shows how strongly a discipline is affected by its underlying metaphysical presuppositions. Traditional explanations, from antiquity through the nineteenth century, include participation by God or the gods; music as a bearer of sacred and harmonic numbers; the doctrine of correspondences and occult sympathies; the presence of animal spirits, subtle fluids, and other non-material elements in the human compound. The official belief system of the modern medical establishment cannot allow for any of these, hence its attempt to find materialistic explanations of how music therapy works. In the late 20th century some therapists, rejecting this constraint, returned to a more spiritual approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the history of what is termed the secular moral project by providing a synopsis of the history of the moral argument for God's existence and the various historical processes that have contributed to the secularization of ethics. I argue that three key thinkers propel the secular moral project forward from the middle of the 19th century into the 20th century: John Stuart Mill, whose ethical thinking in Utilitarianism serves as the background to all late 19th century secular ethical thinking, Henry Sidgwick, who, in the Methods, indisputably establishes the secular autonomy of ethics as a distinctive discipline (metaethics), and finally, G.E. Moore, whose work, the Principia Ethica, stands at the forefront of virtually all secular metaethical debates concerning naturalism and non-naturalism in the first half of the 20th century. Although secular metaethics continues to be the dominant ethical view of the academy, it is shown that theistic metaethics is a strong reemerging position in the early 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Blaubeuren monastery (Germany) is home to one of the most beautiful religious artistic expressions of Swabian art from the end of the 15th century, a collaborative work of various artists and workshops, including Jörg Syrlin the Younger, Michel Erhart, Hans Schüchlin, Bartholomäus Zeitblom, and Bernhard Strigel. It is a high altar triptych with a double opening. On its right inner bas-relief is "The Adoration of the Magi", a work by Bartholomäus Zeitblom (ca. 1455–1520), a prominent member of the Ulm School. In the scene, on King Balthazar's leg, there is a short literary text and a number, "DIER ZVO LIEB 100", as well as a crowned monogram among floral elements. In this decipherment study, we propose meanings for all of these inscriptions, based on a collection of various previous solutions. The conclusions lead us to a pious expression toward the Child God based on an old Tyrolean Christmas carol compiled in the 19th century, which we trace back to at least the 15th century, an author's signature by Zeitblom, and an acknowledgment of the royalty of the Virgin Mother Mary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a revisionist account of the early circulation of copies of the Madonna of Santa Maria Maggiore, known since the nineteenth century as the Salus Populi Romani. Traditionally, the propulsion of the image into global circulation has been attributed variously to Pius V or Francisco Borja, the third Superior General of the Society of Jesus. The article argues that the circulation of the Saint Luke Madonna, as it was known at the time, was closely tied to the martyr's cult that grew up around the Jesuit missionary Inácio de Azevedo and the so-called Brazil Martyrs, a group of Jesuits murdered by Calvinist corsairs off the Canary Islands in 1570. Azevedo had intended to carry a copy of the Roman icon to Brazil, a copy that perished at sea with Azevedo and the party of Jesuit missionaries. The article suggests that the popularity of the image among Jesuits in Europe and the overseas missions was fueled by the nascent martyr's cult that followed Azevedo's death. Painted copies of the Saint Luke Madonna came to function, together with relics of the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne, as proxies for the missing material remains of the martyred Jesuits. The article argues that while the distribution of the image was globally extensive, circulation was restricted to an internal Jesuit martyr's cult. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spirit-writing (fuluan 扶鸞 or fuji 扶乩) movement was a response to modern crises in the domain of Chinese popular religion. From the nineteenth century, spirit-writing cults sprang up throughout China and became a national religious trend. These cults were centered around moral reform promoted through spirit-writing and aimed to reorient traditional values. This article focuses on how the Chinese conceptualized modern crises as jie 劫 by means of spirit-writing, expounded crises in the local context, and reacted to these ideas and crises in their religious and social practices. In the Chaozhou region, the movement arose in the context of disasters, political chaos, and the transmission of foreign culture and religions from the late nineteenth century. Chaozhou spirit-writing cults discoursed on the concept of jie as their doctrinal foundation and endeavored to save the world by receiving moral revelations from deities. They regarded doing good deeds as a way of cultivation and urged people to perform good deeds to avert disasters. Through the planchette, they expounded the meaning of good deeds and enriched their crisis theories in their religious practice. The movement demonstrated the initiative of popular religion, interpreting and reacting to modern crises by using traditional soteriological notions and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In northern China, four animals—the fox, weasel, hedgehog, and snake—are commonly believed to have the magical power of immortality, and they are referred to as the Four Animal Spirits (四大门, sidamen). Researchers have regarded these spirits as part of a form of shamanism, but what I learned from my fieldwork in Beijing suggests a different understanding. From the 19th century to the present day, many inhabitants of Beijing have consistently believed that the Four Animal Spirits have their own personalities, intentionalities, and social organisation. They can change their status through self-cultivation, and they share the city with humans, who are their neighbours. As humans can understand animals, these animals can understand humans and respond rationally to changes happening in the world. These beliefs are not unique to Beijing's residents; indeed, similar ideas can be found in classical Chinese literature before the Han Dynasty (202–220 BCE); moreover, these beliefs differ significantly from the widely accepted theory of shamanism. Knowing about the Four Animal Spirits does not constitute a window into or a way of organising human societies; the Four Animal Spirits do not represent a cultural structure or deep unconsciousness. They provide knowledge about the relationship between humans and animals and entice people to learn about these animals, live with them, and, ultimately, construct a world in which humans and animals can coexist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tracing back political Islam to the French Campaign that invaded Egypt in 1798, the article argues that political Islam emerged and developed from within the folds of the modern nation state in Egypt. The article conceptualizes three historical phases: from 1805 to 1849, 1849 to 1879, and 1879 to the mid-1920s. Each of these phases is centered around a common theme that characterized the discourses, knowledge, and structures of politics, the economy and "Islam", as they encountered the West, which are, in order, technology, civilization, and ideology. The works of Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār will be explored as an example of the first phase, and the works of Rifāʿah al-Ṭahṭāwī will be the example of the second phase, where Islam, as it encounters politics, becomes the foundation of state nationalism. The third phase will start with a transitional period of undifferentiated discourses, but will quickly, after the British occupation in 1882, differentiate into three political Islams: liberal, represented by Muḥammad ʿAbduh and al-Ummah Party; official, represented by ʿAlī Yūsuf and the Reform on the Constitutional Principles Party; and extra-state, radical Islamism, represented by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Jāwiš, and the Nationalist Party. The article will explain the national and international political and economic contexts that surrounded and participated in the formations of political Islam in all its varieties. Against the popular academic conviction of rooting Ḥasan al-Bannā's thought in Muḥammad ʿAbduh's work, and rooting ʿAbduh in Jamāl al-Afghānī's movement, this article will explain the rupture and contradictions between Afghānī and ʿAbduh, on the one hand, and the rooting of al-Bannā's ideology in ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Jāwīš's thought, on the other hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surprisingly, there are at least three major theological subjects where Hermann Cohen seems to agree with Mendelssohn—against standard Jewish Reform theology. Even more interesting: All three points stand in connection with the religious thought of Moses Maimonides (1137–1204), the medieval halakhist and philosopher, whose radical theological ideas Mendelssohn mostly rejected and Cohen generally adopted. Should this observation be true, however, we might assume that Cohen took at least a few hints for his own reading of Maimonides from Mendelssohn. This conclusion would then in itself be surprising, because Cohen, contrary to the Jewish Reform theologians of the 19th century, and in fact contrary to everyone else, read Maimonides in what was generally called an "idiosyncratic" way: For Cohen, Maimonides was a proto-idealist, who often followed Plato much more than Aristotle, and who sometimes even anticipated Immanuel Kant. Even more exceptionally, for Cohen Maimonides' philosophy in the Guide of the Perplexed was focused on a theology of ethics rather than on a metaphysics of knowledge of the divine. I will attempt to provide proof-texts showing that on these three points Mendelssohn and Cohen are essentially in harmony. Still, my proofs for a probable Mendelssohnian influence on Cohen depend on a very close reading of both Mendelssohn's relevant passages, as well as of the corresponding texts in Maimonides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the complexity of religious practices and beliefs among a group of Zera Beta Israel (Falash Mura) members before, during, and a decade after their immigration process to Israel. This community, with roots in Judaism, converted to Christianity in the 19th century, complicating their request to immigrate to Israel along with Beta Israel members (Ethiopian Jews who had not converted to Christianity). Following an average 15-year wait in Ethiopian transit camps, they spent about two years in Israeli absorption centres and underwent conversion to rabbinic Judaism. This study aims to elucidate notions of religious, cultural, and oppositional transnationalism through life experiences described by Zera Beta Israel community members. Drawing on transnational theory and an interpretative qualitative approach, it develops and analyses 25 in-depth, semi-structured interviews and conversations conducted with members of the Zera Beta Israel community in Ethiopia and Israel. The findings challenge conventional binary perceptions and conceptual categories, such as Jewish–Christian or religious–secular and demonstrate the fluidity and complexity—the hybridity—that exists in the contexts of religion and immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colonial education and missionary discourse of modernity intensified struggles for continuity and change among the followers of Hinduism and Christianity in nineteenth century India. While missionary modernity was characterised by an emphasis on sociocultural changes among the marginalized women through Christian norms of decency, orthodox Hindus used traditional cultural practices to confront missionary modernization endeavours. This article posits that the discourse of missionary modernity needs to be understood through the principles of Western secular modernity that impelled missionaries to employ decent clothing as a symbol of Christian femininity. It argues that missionary modernity not only emboldened the marginalized women to challenge their ascribed sociocultural standing but also solidified communitarian consciousness among the followers of Hinduism and Christianity substantially. Even though Travancore state defended the entrenched customary practices, including women's attire patterns, with all its potency through authoritative proclamations, it could not dissuade missionaries from converting the marginalized women to missionary modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a piece of microhistorical research of a court case investigating religious conversion in Russia in the 1820s. It presents the story of an Orthodox Christian girl who adopted "Jewish law" and married a Jewish man. The article attempts to define the background and peculiarities of the conversion and clarify the context in which this was taking place. The work uses various methods: narrative, comparative, contextual analysis, text interpretation, etc. Analysis of the court case establishes that the girl's change of faith was the result of: (1) close contacts with the Jews and lack of social ties within the Christian community; (2) poverty and extremely low social status; (3) lack of "religious capital". Jewish social assistance practices, ways to legalize a new status, finding a job, and personal freedom turned out to be attractive to the serf woman. The novelty of this study involves the introduction of a previously unknown archival source representing a very rare phenomenon of conversion to Judaism in imperial Russia. In addition, the article presents the paradoxical case of an attempt at re-socialization by transitioning from the dominant confession to the faith of a religious minority and integration into a community whose rights in Russia were heavily curtailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political impact of Dr. Eleanor Lansing Dulles has not been assessed in her capacity as a power broker who brought her theological understandings to Cold War United States policy. The deep influence of both her brothers—Allen, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and John Foster, Secretary of State under Dwight D. Eisenhower—on global affairs and diplomacy has been the topic of myriad studies. Works draw extensively on family biography, noting that both "nature and nurture" brought religion to US foreign policy. Including Dr. Dulles in the analysis provides nuance and complexity to definitions of Christian nationalism and underscores the legacy of both missionaries and religious thought in US foreign relations during the early Cold War. Contextualizing religiosity through a study of gender and the Dulles family legacy of female missionaries into the Cold War narrative builds upon the existing literature of the Dulles family, religion, and Cold War diplomacy to challenge concepts such as Christian internationalism, Christian nationalism, and Left–Right binaries. Diplomacy is revealed as her form of Christian missionary work in the secular sphere. Eleanor Lansing Dulles became a missionary not for a religion, but for a nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I connect the invention of Japanese 'religion' since the Meiji era (1868–1912) with the invention of other modern imaginaries, particularly the Japanese Nation State and Japanese History. The invention of these powerful fictions in Japan was a specific, localised example of a global process. The real significance of this idea that religion has always existed in all times and places is that it normalises the idea of the non-religious secular as the arena of universal reason and progress. The invention of Japanese 'religion' had—and still has—a significant function in the wider, global context of colonial capital and the continual search for new 'investment' opportunities. Meiji Japan illustrates, in fascinating detail, a process of cognitive hegemony, and the way a globalising discourse on 'progress' transformed the plunder of colonial sites into a civilising mission. The idea that there is a universal type of practice, belief or institution called 'religion' as distinct from government, 'politics' or 'science' was not only new to Japan. It hardly existed in England or more widely in Protestant Europe and North America until the eighteenth or even 19th century. The idea of a secular constitutional nation state was only emergent in the late 18th century with the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Most of Europe—including the colonial powers England and France—were still Christian confessional church states through most of the 19th century. The franchise was granted only to Christian men of substantial property, and denied to women, servants, wage labour, colonised subjects, and slaves. This critical, deconstructive narrative helps us to see more clearly the ideological function of the generic category of religion in the wider configuration of modern secular categories such as constitutional nation state, political economy, nature, history, and science. I also discuss the relation between History as a secular academic science, and the invention of 'the Past' in universal Time. I argue here that the invention of the Past by professional Historians has a significant role in transforming modern inventions such as 'religion' and the secular categories into the inherent and universal order of things, as though they have always been everywhere. I reveal this on-going process of ideological reproduction by close readings of some recent 'histories of Japan' and the way they uncritically construct 'the Past' in the terms of contemporary configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mandate for women's silence in 1 Corinthians 14.34-35 is an incongruity within Paul's undisputed writings. Critical scholars expressed doubts about these verses' authorship beginning in the nineteenth century. The consensus of egalitarian Paulists today is that vv.34-35 are not Paul's sentiments. Disagreements about circumstances beyond this fact remain unresolved. Supporters of the quotation/refutation ("Q/R") hypothesis argue that Paul quoted a letter from Corinth in vv.34-35 and refuted it in v.36. Supporters of the interpolation hypothesis regard the passage as a marginal gloss by a later author, inserted at one of two locations (after v.33 or v.40). The present work favors the Q/R position. Tertullian of Carthage (c.155-220 CE) was the first known exegetist of vv.34-35. Tertullian and his successors employed the Western text-type manuscript tradition. The second century CE displacement of vv.34-35 (following v.40) in this text stream is not evidence of haphazard interpolation. It coheres with a pattern of anti-feminist redactions in the Western texts of the epistles and Acts. The editors of the Western text-type sought to harmonize the genuine epistles with pseudo-Pauline material. This harmonization effort shaped later orthodox exegesis, which established canonical norms by domesticating Paul and recast him in the image of a Greco-Roman gender traditionalist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalisher's messianic innovations asserted the centrality of a renewal of offerings on the altar to the creation of a linear path to redemption. Despite the common convention, his ideas were not disregarded by his peers and followers. In fact, while his ideas did not predetermine the rabbinic discourse, halakhic questions concerning the rebuilding of the Temple and its laws became quite popular and common. Surprisingly, lay figures, as well as several Talmudic scholars, kept this messianic idea alive. Indeed, from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, such figures published numerous works calling for concrete efforts to rebuild the Temple and renew the offerings. These findings shed light on the renewed religious Zionist interest in this method of reconnecting with God and promoting the final redemption, which is neither new, nor does it deviate from known and publicly articulated ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Looking at some illustrative examples of the reception of Jeremiah in modern Hebrew literature, this article explores how both the prophet and the book named after him were reworked by modern Hebrew authors and poets in the body of literary works in Hebrew that emerged during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Europe in the wake of the Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on literary scholar Susan Ryan’s work to show how Americans worked out national as well as racial identities through benevolent activity, including forms of reformative incarceration. Reformers operated as true citizens by sustaining themselves and providing for others. Recipients, on the other hand, functioned as people in need. Ryan argues that benevolent activists ascribed need to entire groups of people. As a result, “the categories of blackness, Indianness, and Irishness…came to signify need itself.„ Elite Americans thereby “raced„ need, assigning essential difference to populations they sought to relieve. Ryan’s work on racialized need can help us understand the connections between Christianity, race, and mass incarceration. I explore how one nineteenth-century military prison—and the disciplinary institutions later modeled on it—was created in direct response to presumed (and raced) need among Native Americans. I also consider how Christian reformers obscured and concealed the racialized nature of this institution—and how, in that avoidance, they came to sanctify mass incarceration for racial minorities. Finally, I look at two incarcerated Native artists’ drawings to show how people caught up in racialized renderings of their need have something else to say about who they are and what prison is.