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In Godless Americana, author Sikivu Hutchinson challenges the myths behind Americana images of Mom, Apple pie, white picket fences, and racially segregated god-fearing Main Street USA. In this timely essay collection, Hutchinson argues that the Christian evangelical backlash against Women's rights, social justice, LGBT equality, and science threatens to turn back the clock on civil rights. As a result of this climate, more people of color are exploring atheism, agnosticism, and freethought. Godless Americana examines these trends, providing a groundbreaking analysis of faith and radical humanist politics in an era of racial, sexual, and religious warfare.
Occupying much of imperial China’s Yangzi River heartland and costing more than twenty million lives, the Taiping Rebellion (1851-64) was no ordinary peasant revolt. What most distinguished this dramatic upheaval from earlier rebellions were the spiritual beliefs of the rebels. The core of the Taiping faith focused on the belief that Shangdi, the high God of classical China, had chosen the Taiping leader, Hong Xiuquan, to establish his Heavenly Kingdom on Earth. How were the Taiping rebels, professing this new creed, able to mount their rebellion and recruit multitudes of followers in their sweep through the empire? Thomas Reilly argues that the Taiping faith, although kindled by Protestant sources, developed into a dynamic new Chinese religion whose conception of its sovereign deity challenged the legitimacy of the Chinese empire. The Taiping rebels denounced the divine pretensions of the imperial title and the sacred character of the imperial office as blasphemous usurpations of Shangdi’s title and position. In place of the imperial institution, the rebels called for restoration of the classical system of kingship. Previous rebellions had declared their contemporary dynasties corrupt and therefore in need of revival; the Taiping, by contrast, branded the entire imperial order blasphemous and in need of replacement. In this study, Reilly emphasizes the Christian elements of the Taiping faith, showing how Protestant missionaries built on earlier Catholic efforts to translate Christianity into a Chinese idiom. Prior studies of the rebellion have failed to appreciate how Hong Xiuquan’s interpretation of Christianity connected the Taiping faith to an imperial Chinese cultural and religious context. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom shows how the Bible--in particular, a Chinese translation of the Old Testament--profoundly influenced Hong and his followers, leading them to understand the first three of the Ten Commandments as an indictment of the imperial order. The rebels thus sought to destroy imperial culture along with its institutions and Confucian underpinnings, all of which they regarded as blasphemous. Strongly iconoclastic, the Taiping followers smashed religious statues and imperially approved icons throughout the lands they conquered. By such actions the Taiping Rebellion transformed--at least for its followers but to some extent for all Chinese--how Chinese people thought about religion, the imperial title and office, and the entire traditional imperial and Confucian order. This book makes a major contribution to the study of the Taiping Rebellion and to our understanding of the ideology of both the rebels and the traditional imperial order they opposed. It will appeal to scholars in the fields of Chinese history, religion, and culture and of Christian theology and church history.
This book is the fascinating account of a family that took seriously the challenge to follow Christ… and to overtake Him. With warmth and realism, Venerable Tescelin, Blesseds Alice, Guy, Gerard, Humbeline, Andrew, Bartholomew, Nivard and St. Bernard step off these pages with the engaging naturalness that attracts imitation. Here is a book that makes centuries disappear, as each member of this unique family becomes an inspiration in our own quest of overtaking Christ. One of the Biggest figures in this book is Bernard of Clairvaux. He was called the man of his age, the voice of his century. His influence towered above that of his contemporaries, and his sanctity moved God Himself. Men flocked to him¬—some in wonder, others in curiosity, but all drawn by the magnetism of his spiritual giant hood. Bernard —who or what fashioned him to be suitable for his role of counseling Popes, healing schisms, battling errors and filling the world with holy religious and profound spiritual doctrine? Undoubtedly, Bernard is the product of God's grace. But it is hard to say whether this grace is more evident in Bernard himself or in the extraordinary family in which God chose to situate this dynamic personality.
As the twenty-first century is ushered in, rebels, revolutionaries and political dissidents remain a major roadblock to the structuring of a new world order. Challenging their national or local institutions of authority--political or economic, social or religious--aggrieved individuals and disgruntled communities continue to wage their eternal struggles against those perceived as perverting the common good. Rebels with a Cause seeks to explain the minds, motives, means, and morality of those who espouse individual as well as communal dissent and resistance--violent or otherwise--in the name of some greater good. The ranks of political offenders vary widely: Civil Disobedients; Conscientious Objectors; Dissidents; Fanatics; Freedom Fighters; Fundamentalists; Militants; Political Prisoners; Pseudo-Politicals; Rebels; Resisters; Revolutionaries and Terrorists. The cast of characters is equally diverse and colorful: from Rome's Brutus to South Africa's Nelson Mandela. From America's John Brown and Susan B. Anthony to John Wilkes Booth and Timothy J. McVeigh. From Cuba's Che Guevara to the anonymous heroes of Beijing's Tienaman Square. From the Soviet Union's Aleksander Solzhenistzen to Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi. Rebels portrays political offenders as products of three unorthodoxies. They constitute neither traditional political actors, nor common criminals or lawful belligerents. As players in the political arena, they refuse to abide by the rules and means of conventional politics--the ballot box and the rule of law. Offending against the prevailing law, they nevertheless disclaim the common criminal's venal goals to assert their own pursuit of altruistic communal and just objectives. Finally, as militant activists they act surreptiously, disclaim uniforms and insignias, proclaim allegiance to no sovereign and in their resort to indiscriminate violence they spurn the rules of lawful belligerency. This triple unorthodoxy has made the development of coherent public responses to political dissidents, resisters and rebels particularly difficult. Rebels does not only identify the actors and social forces that have caused nearly half of all countries throughout the globe to become infected with the ethnic, religious, tribal, clannish, and racial strife which now tear them apart. Acknowledging that domestic conflicts are replacing international warfare as the source of political disorder and violence in the emerging decades, Rebels also offers both readers and antagonists new insights and constructive approaches for the making of a less hostile and violent world. Rebels with a Cause will help readers address some of this era's most troublesome questions. What weight should one give to the demands of his conscience or the urgings of his or her faith? When should one reject the rules of those in power and stand up against evil laws and governments? Is one ever entitled to disobey the commands of an allegedly “democratic” regime? What means may one justly use in the struggle against tyrants, dictators, and other abusers of power? And when does a dissenter cease to be a freedom fighter and become a terrorist? Rebels with a Cause responds to these and other pressing contemporary questions with a "Bill of Rights on Just Authority and Just Resistance" as a guide for both the governed and those who govern.
This volume, written by eighteen monks, nuns, and lay scholars from seven countries and four continents, aims to recognize the contribution that Michael Casey has made to Cistercian and Benedictine life over the past forty years. Acclaimed as one of the most significant writers in the Benedictine and Cistercian tradition, Casey has published over one hundred articles and reviews in various journals, written more than eighteen books, and edited many more books and journals. He is a world-renowned retreat master, lecturer, and formator. Contributors include: Carmel Posa, SGS; David Tomlins, OCSO; Helen Lombard, SGS; Manuela Scheiba, OSB; David Barry, OSB; Mary Collins, OSB; Brendan Thomas, OSB; Elias Dietz, OCSO; Constant J. Mews; Bernardo Bonowitz, OCSO; Terrence Kardong, OSB; Elizabeth Freeman; Austin Cooper, OMI; Katharine Massam; Margaret Malone, SGS; Bernhard A. Eckerstorfer, OSB; Columba Stewart, OSB; Francisco Rafael de Pascual, OCSO; and Bishop Graeme Rutherford
There is a long history of state governments providing support to nonstate armed groups fighting battles in other countries. Examples include Syria's aid to Hamas, Ecuador's support for FARC, and Libya's donation of arms to the IRA. What motivates states to do this? And why would rebel groups align themselves with these states? In States in Disguise, Belgin San-Akca builds a rigorous theoretical framework within which to study the complex and fluid network of relationships between states and rebel groups, including ethnic and religious insurgents, revolutionary groups, and terrorists. She proves that patterns of alliances between armed rebels and modern states are hardly coincidental, but the result of systematic and strategic choices made by both states and rebel groups. San-Akca demonstrates that these alliances are the result of shared conflictual, material and ideational interests, and her theory shows how to understand these ties via the domestic and international environment. Drawing from an original data set of 455 groups, their target states, and supporters over a span of more than sixty years, she explains that states are most likely to support rebel groups when they are confronted with internal and external threats simultaneously, while rebels select strong states and democracies when seeking outside support. She also shows that states and rebels look to align with one another when they share ethnic, religious and ideological ties. Through its broad chronological sweep, States in Disguise reveals how and why the phenomenon of state and rebel group alliances has evolved over time.
Mei Lin, a woman warrior, and pigboy Wang Lee find love, intrigue, adventure, and danger as rebels seeking to overthrow the Chinese emperor during the 1850s amid the Taiping Rebellion.