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Articles 1 - 18 of 18
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Semantics And The Study Of Religion, G. Scott Davis
Semantics And The Study Of Religion, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
This essay argues that the approach to meaning articulated by Donald Davidson supplies all the student of religion needs to know about this subject. By focusing on interpretation as understood by Davidson, we can understand, for example, the beliefs and practices of a people such as the Dogon of Mali. By adding to this the evidence of ethnography and history, students of religion can give a compelling account of change and adjudicate between competing analyses.
Shakers And Jerkers: Letters From The "Long Walk," 1805, Part I, Douglas L. Winiarski
Shakers And Jerkers: Letters From The "Long Walk," 1805, Part I, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Reports of a bizarre new religious phenomenon made their way over the mountains from Tennessee during the summer and fall of 1804. For several years, readers in the eastern states had been eagerly consuming news of the Great Revival, the powerful succession of Presbyterian sacramental festivals and Methodist camp meetings that played a formative role in the development of the southern Bible Belt and the emergence of early American evangelicalism. Letters from the frontier frequently included vivid descriptions of the so-called “falling exercise,” in which the bodies of revival converts crumpled to the ground during powerful sermon performances on the …
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iv: Experience Mayhew’S Dissertation On Edwards’S Humble Inquiry, Douglas L. Winiarski
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iv: Experience Mayhew’S Dissertation On Edwards’S Humble Inquiry, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
This fourth installment in a series exploring newly discovered manuscripts relating to the “Qualifications Controversy” that drove Edwards from his Northampton pastorate presents an unpublished oppositional dissertation by Experience Mayhew, a prominent eighteenth-century Indian missionary from Martha’s Vineyard. Next to Solomon Stoddard, Mayhew was Edwards’s most important theological target during the conflict. Where Edwards pressed toward precision in defining the qualifications for admission to the Lord’s Supper, Mayhew remained convinced that the standards for membership in New England’s Congregational churches should encompass a broad range of knowledge and experience. His rejoinder to Edwards’s Humble Inquiry provides a rare opportunity to …
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Ii: Relations, Professions, And Experiences, 1748-1760, Douglas L. Winiarski
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Ii: Relations, Professions, And Experiences, 1748-1760, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
The second installment of a five-part series presenting documents relating to the “Qualifications Controversy” that led to Edwards’ dismissal at Northampton, this article presents a series of “relations,” or lay spiritual autobiographies presented for church membership. These relations come from other Massachusetts churches, many of whose pastors were aligned with Edwards, and yet reveal some significant differences from the form and content that Edwards came to advocate for such relations.
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iii: Count Vavasor's Tirade And The Second Council, 1751, Douglas L. Winiarski
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy Iii: Count Vavasor's Tirade And The Second Council, 1751, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Jonathan Edwards’ fateful decision to repudiate the church admission practices of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, provoked a bitter dispute with his parishioners that led to his dismissal in 1750. Scholars have long debated the meaning of this crucial turning point in Edwards’ pastoral career. For early biographers, the Northampton communion controversy served as an index of eighteenth-century religious decline. More recent studies situate Edwards’ dismissal within a series of local quarrels over his salary, the “Bad Book” affair, conflicts with the Williams family, and the paternity case of Elisha Hawley. This essay is the first a series that reexamines the …
The Cognitive Science Of Religion (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
The Cognitive Science Of Religion (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Review of the book, The Cognitive Science of Religion, by James van Slyke. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2011.
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy I: David Hall's Diary And Letter To Edward Billing, Douglas L. Winiarski
New Perspectives On The Northampton Communion Controversy I: David Hall's Diary And Letter To Edward Billing, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Jonathan Edwards’ fateful decision to repudiate the church admission practices of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, provoked a bitter dispute with his parishioners that led to his dismissal in 1750. Scholars have long debated the meaning of this crucial turning point in Edwards’ pastoral career. For early biographers, the Northampton communion controversy served as an index of eighteenth-century religious decline. More recent studies situate Edwards’ dismissal within a series of local quarrels over his salary, the “Bad Book” affair, conflicts with the Williams family, and the paternity case of Elisha Hawley. This essay is the first a series that reexamines the …
Donald Davidson, Anomalous Monism And The Study Of Religion, G. Scott Davis
Donald Davidson, Anomalous Monism And The Study Of Religion, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Donald Davidson’s concept of “anomalous monism” is not nearly as well known as his related attack on the idea of “conceptual schemes,” though they are closely related. This concept, I shall argue, has several important implications for the study of religion. In particular, it implies that, as an account of mind and language, “cognitive science” is going to be of limited interest. Moreover, and that approaches to the study of religion based on models drawn from cognitive science are likely to be “degenerate research programmes.” If this is so, then we can reasonably marginalize such programmes to the extent that …
A Question Of Plain Dealing: Josiah Cotton, Native Christians, And The Quest For Security In Eighteenth-Century Plymouth County, Douglas L. Winiarski
A Question Of Plain Dealing: Josiah Cotton, Native Christians, And The Quest For Security In Eighteenth-Century Plymouth County, Douglas L. Winiarski
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
In the wake of King Philip's War (1675-76), Wampanoags throughout the "Old Colony" - Plymouth, Bristol, and Barnstable Counties in southeastern Massachusetts - struggled to pick up the pieces of a culture shattered by violence and warfare, riven with internal dissension, and plagued by economic exploitation and English racism. As several revisionist studies have shown, Indians like Ned turned to Christianity to combat the social and economic challenges confronting their communities during the first half of the eighteenth century, but they did so in complex and at times contradictory ways. The tenant families at Plain Dealing, for example, consigned their …
Roman Catholicism: Theology And Colonization, G. Scott Davis
Roman Catholicism: Theology And Colonization, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
The Catholic tradition in the Latin West grew up on the foundations laid by Rome. It accepted as fact the urban establishments that had started as colonial settlements and the need for such settlements to safeguard the imperial order. Thus in Catholic religious thought colonization and colonialism have no independent status; they are matters for legal and political reflection. Nonetheless, Catholic moral theology, particularly as it dealt with mission and conquest, had much to say about the activities that made colonization possible.
Wittgenstein And The Recovery Of Virtue, G. Scott Davis
Wittgenstein And The Recovery Of Virtue, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Modern, scientific, man doesn't see miracles, only odd phenomena that call out for more thorough study. Ethics, like the miraculous, doesn't defy scientific explanation; it just doesn't exist. In what follows I hope to do two things., On the one hand, I want to embrace Wittgenstein's rejection of ethics as theory, in the sense of a systematic body of knowledge about the world. On the other, I hope to suggest that this rejection opens up conceptual space for understanding ethics as a critical human enterprise.
Tradition And Truth In Christian Ethics: John Yoder And The Bases Of Biblical Realism, G. Scott Davis
Tradition And Truth In Christian Ethics: John Yoder And The Bases Of Biblical Realism, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Reflecting on the state of theological ethics in 1981, James Gustafson wrote that "the radical Christian ethics of Yoder mark a substantive position for which there are many sound defenses; to opt against it is to opt against some fundamental claims of traditional Christianity." This, however, comes fast on the heels of Gustafson's remark that, despite its historical, biblical, sociological, and moral warrants, "I note Yoder's option here because it is the one most dramatically different from the option I shall pursue.'' The attentive outsider, unaccustomed to the ways of Christian ethics, is likely to wonder what, with all those …
War And Its Discontents: Pacifism And Quietism In The Abrahamic Traditions (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
War And Its Discontents: Pacifism And Quietism In The Abrahamic Traditions (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Review of the book, War and Its Discontents: Pacifism and Quietism in the Abrahamic Traditions, edited by J. Patout Burns. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996.
Philanthropy As A Virtue In Late Antiquity And The Middle Ages, G. Scott Davis
Philanthropy As A Virtue In Late Antiquity And The Middle Ages, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
"Philanthropy," "charity," and related concepts were well known to late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Rulers, wealthy individuals and, early on, the Christian church founded hospitals, distributed food, and established forms of relief for the needy of various sorts throughout the period. The problem comes in interpreting these activities, their motives, and their goals. Is the philanthropia of a pre-Christian philosopher of a piece with the agape, or Christian love, of a fourth-century bishop? When the Roman emperor provides bread and circuses, what does he intend and why does he do it? Does the twelfth-century nobleman intend the same? As …
Interpretations Of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism, And The Just War Tradition (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Interpretations Of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism, And The Just War Tradition (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Review of the book, Interpretations of Conflict: Ethics, Pacifism, and the Just War Tradition, by Richard B. Miller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Policraticus (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Policraticus (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Review of the book, Policraticus, edited and translated by Cary J. Nederman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Religion, Interpretation, And Diversity Of Belief: The Framework Model From Kant To Durkheim To Davidson (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Religion, Interpretation, And Diversity Of Belief: The Framework Model From Kant To Durkheim To Davidson (Book Review), G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
Review of the book, Religion, Interpretation, and Diversity of Belief: The Framework Model from Kant to Durkheim to Davidson by Terry Godlove. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
The Unity Of The Virtues In Abelard's Dialogus, G. Scott Davis
The Unity Of The Virtues In Abelard's Dialogus, G. Scott Davis
Religious Studies Faculty Publications
That a thinker discusses a topic is often noted, while how he discusses that topic is left insufficiently clear. A case in point is Peter Abelard, "who," D. E. Luscombe has claimed, "first in his time attempted a serious philosophical discussion of natural virtue and who first really put the human virtues upon the theological map." Despite continuing interest in Abelard, and his ethics in particular, little has been done to illuminate what he takes a virtue to be, how the virtues are interrelated, and how Abelard's account compares to other treatments of the virtues. This paper attempts, if only …