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The province of Quebec used to be called the priest-ridden province by its Protestant neighbors in Canada. During the 1960s, Quebec became radically secular, directly leading to its evolution as a welfare state with lay social services. What happened to cause this abrupt change? Genevieve Zubrzycki gives us an elegant and penetrating history, showing that a key incident sets up the transformation. Saint John the Baptist is the patron saint of French Canadians, and, until 1969, was subject of annual celebrations with a parade in Montreal. That year, the statue of St. John was toppled by protestors, breaking off the head from the body. Here, then is the proximate cause: the beheading of a saint, a symbolic death to be sure, which caused the parades to disappear and other modes of national celebration to take their place. The beheading of the saint was part and parcel of the so-called Quiet Revolution, a period of far-reaching social, economic, political, and cultural transformations. Quebec society and the identity of its French-speaking members drastically reinvented themselves with the rejection of Catholicism. Zubrzycki is already acknowledged as a leading authority on nationalism and religion; this book will significantly enlarge her stature by showing the extent to which a core feature of the Quiet Revolution was an aesthetic revolt. A new generation rejected the symbols of French Canada, redefining national identity in the process (and as a process) and providing momentum for institutional reforms. We learn that symbols have causal force, generating chains of significations which can transform a Catholic-dominated conservative society into a leftist, forward-looking, secular society."
In the summer and fall of 1998, ultranationalist Polish Catholics erected hundreds of crosses outside Auschwitz, setting off a fierce debate that pitted Catholics and Jews against one another. While this controversy had ramifications that extended well beyond Poland’s borders, Geneviève Zubrzycki sees it as a particularly crucial moment in the development of post-Communist Poland’s statehood and its changing relationship to Catholicism. In The Crosses of Auschwitz, Zubrzycki skillfully demonstrates how this episode crystallized latent social conflicts regarding the significance of Catholicism in defining “Polishness” and the role of anti-Semitism in the construction of a new Polish identity. Since the fall of Communism, the binding that has held Polish identity and Catholicism together has begun to erode, creating unease among ultranationalists. Within their construction of Polish identity also exists pride in the Polish people’s long history of suffering. For the ultranationalists, then, the crosses at Auschwitz were not only symbols of their ethno-Catholic vision, but also an attempt to lay claim to what they perceived was a Jewish monopoly over martyrdom. This gripping account of the emotional and aesthetic aspects of the scene of the crosses at Auschwitz offers profound insights into what Polishness is today and what it may become.
Never before has humanity existed in a culture that rejects belief in a transcendent power. Previous cultures -- even when rent by bitter disagreements -- shared a common belief that a greater force stood above the material realm. But when one side acknowledges an ultimate source of truth while the other side denies it, debate is dead, and mutual understanding is impossible. So claims Fr. Dwight Longenecker in his most captivating book yet, Beheading Hydra. Longenecker shows how, like the mythical serpentine beast with myriad writhing and venomous heads, atheism manifests itself today through sixteen "isms" that cloak the actions of the antichrist, who seethes with pure hatred of God and His truth. Because any good battle plan calls for a thorough knowledge of the enemy, Fr. Longenecker boldly exposes the philosophies behind scientism, materialism, utilitarianism, sentimental humanitarianism, and more, explaining how they became the core assumptions of our culture and how they are, in turn, corrupting the politics and power structures of the world. Beheading Hydra brilliantly catalogs the alluring and seductive deceptions of each ism to help you see how they are corroding the very foundations of Western civilization and entrapping countless faithful Christians. Best of all, the book lays out a plan of action to behead the Hydra that calls for neither direct conflict nor even dialogue, but creative subversion. You'll discover what this means along with the powerful and practical actions you and your friends can take now. You'll also learn how to acquire the grace needed to see clearly the problem -- and the solutions. It is ordinary men and women who become extraordinary heroes in this battle against Satan, explains Fr. Longenecker. Only by the light of our lives will we defeat this darkness. Debate and dialogue are now pointless. Our lives are our only remaining argument.
The publication of the King James version of the Bible, translated between 1603 and 1611, coincided with an extraordinary flowering of English literature and is universally acknowledged as the greatest influence on English-language literature in history. Now, world-class literary writers introduce the book of the King James Bible in a series of beautifully designed, small-format volumes. The introducers' passionate, provocative, and personal engagements with the spirituality and the language of the text make the Bible come alive as a stunning work of literature and remind us of its overwhelming contemporary relevance.
Execution by beheading is a highly symbolic act. The grisly image of the severed head evokes a particular social and cultural location, functioning as a channel of figurative discourse specific to a place and time--dissuading nonideal behavior as well as expressing and reinforcing group boundary demarcations and ideological assumptions. In short, a bodiless head serves as a discursive vehicle of communication: though silenced, it speaks. Employing social memory theory and insights from a thorough analysis of ancient ideology concerning beheading, A Dangerous Parting explores the communicative impact of the tradition of John the Baptist's decapitation in the first three centuries of the Common Era. Nathan Shedd argues that the early memory of the Immerser's death is characterized by a dangerous synchroneity. On the one hand, John's beheading, associated as it was with Jesus' crucifixion, served as the locus of destabilizing and redistributing the degradation of a victim who undergoes bodily violence; both John and Jesus were mutually vindicated as victims of somatic violence. On the other hand, as John's head was remembered in the second and third century, localized expressions of the Parting of the Ways were inscribed onto that parted head with dangerous anti-Jewish implications. Justin Martyr and Origen represent an attempt to align John's beheading and Jesus' crucifixion along a cultural schematic that asserted the destitution of non-Christ-following Jews and, simultaneously, alleged Christians' ethical, ideological, and spiritual supremacy. A Dangerous Parting uncovers interpretive possibilities of John's beheading, especially regarding the deep-rooted patterns of thinking that have animated indifference to acts of physical violence against Jews throughout history. With this work, Shedd not only pushes John the Baptist research forward to consider the impact of this figure in early expressions of Jewish and Christian distinction, but also urges scholars and students alike to contemplate the ethics of reading ancient texts.
The real story of Santa-and why he became a Saint
Our history is littered with heads. Over the centuries, they have decorated our churches, festooned our city walls and filled our museums; they have been props for artists and specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers and items of barter. Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online and cryonicists promise that our heads may one day live on without our bodies, the severed head is as contentious and compelling as ever. From shrunken heads to trophies of war; from memento mori to Damien Hirst's With Dead Head; from grave-robbing phrenologists to enterprising scientists, Larson explores the bizarre, often gruesome and confounding history of the severed head. Its story is our story.
Through much of its existence, Québec’s neighbors called it the “priest-ridden province.” Today, however, Québec society is staunchly secular, with a modern welfare state built on lay provision of social services—a transformation rooted in the “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s. In Beheading the Saint, Geneviève Zubrzycki studies that transformation through a close investigation of the annual Feast of St. John the Baptist of June 24. The celebrations of that national holiday, she shows, provided a venue for a public contesting of the dominant ethno-Catholic conception of French Canadian identity and, via the violent rejection of Catholic symbols, the articulation of a new, secular Québécois identity. From there, Zubrzycki extends her analysis to the present, looking at the role of Québécois identity in recent debates over immigration, the place of religious symbols in the public sphere, and the politics of cultural heritage—issues that also offer insight on similar debates elsewhere in the world.
"From Agatha to Zeno, this book presents the images and attributes of more than one hundred saints, those most frequently encountered in sacred art, history and legend, tradition and devotional literature. Lavishly illustrated, this book introduces the saints with their identifying attributes, notes on their lives and martyrdoms, and visual references that make it easy to identify their characters and legends and the forms of worship for each."--BOOK JACKET.