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Míng (名) As “Names” Rather Than “Words:” Disabled Bodies Speaking Without Acting In Early Chinese Texts, Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

My first scholarly article was about the work of A. C. Graham. Unfortunately, I never met him but my copies of his books became so worn from over-use that I had to replace them. My second, now equally worn, copy of Later Mohist Logic, Ethics, and Science opens to a statement that inspires my work:

A consistent nominalism has to extend its principle to the particular utterances of the name itself; I pronounce the sound ‘stone’ over X and afterwards convey that Y is like X by pronouncing a similar sound.

This claim has two important implications. First, in early …

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 2, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Throughout the bitterly cold month of January 1805, John Meacham (1770-1854), Issachar Bates (1758-1837), and Benjamin Youngs (1774- 1855), struggled through mud and ice, biting winds, blinding snow, and drenching rains, on a 1,200-mile “Long Walk” to the settlements of the trans-Appalachian West. Traveling south toward Cumberland Gap, the three Shaker missionaries from New Lebanon, New York, were tracking a strange new convulsive religious phenomenon that had gripped Scots-Irish Presbyterians during the frontier religious awakening known as the Great Revival (1799-1805). Observers called the puzzling somatic fits “the Jerks.” Ardent supporters of the revivals believed the jerks were a sign …

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

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 …

Lydia Prout’S Dreadfullest Thought, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

What was Lydia Prout’s “dreadfullest thought”? This microhistory, which examines one of the earliest devotional journals penned by a woman in British North America, uncovers surprising connections between the “unruly passion” of a devoted mother who suffered repeated bereavements during the 1710s and the Satanic fantasies of Salem witchcraft confessors in 1692. An annotated edition of Prout’s journal is reproduced in the essay’s appendix.

The Sodomy Trial Of Nicholas Sension, 1677: Documents And Teaching Guide, Richard Godbeer, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

The sodomy trial of Nicholas Sension in 1677 has long fascinated historians, in part because the surviving documentation from this particular case is exceptionally full and richly detailed, but also because it challenges long-held assumptions about attitudes toward sodomy in early America. The trial records cast light not only on the history of sexuality but also on a broad range of themes relating to seventeenth-century New England’s society and culture. Yet until now no complete edition of the documents from Sension’s trial has appeared in print. This edition is intended primarily for use in undergraduate courses. It includes a substantial …

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

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

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

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 Newbury Prayer Bill Hoax: Devotion And Deception In New England's Era Of Great Awakenings, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

[...] [T]he “Tappin manuscript,” as I refer to it in the essay that follows, presents an intriguing puzzle. If Christopher Toppan did not compose the unusual prayer request, then who did? When? Why? Solving the riddle of the Tappin manuscript leads us into the troubled final years of one of New England’s most pugnacious ministers and the evangelical underworld of the Great Awakening that he had come to despise.

The Sounds Of Zhèngmíng: Setting Names Straight In Early Chinese Texts, Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

In early Chinese texts, straightness often indicates correctness, hence many things are said to be zhèng 正.¹ But among them, only zhèngmíng 正名 emerged as a rhetorical slogan promising the production of order and elimination of human confusion and fakeness.² In scholarship on Chinese ethics, the slogan is usually understood as working toward these goals by making behavior accord with names or by making “names” (norms or social roles) accord with behavior. By contrast, on the assumption that uses of the term “míng” (name/title/fame) involved what something is called or what is …

Grounding "Language" In The Senses: What The Eyes And Ears Reveal About Ming 名 (Names) In Early Chinese Texts, Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Scholarship on early Chinese theories of “language” regularly treats the term ming 名 (name) as the equivalent of “word.” But there is a significant difference between a “word” and a “name.”¹ Moreover, while a “word” is often understood to mean a unit of language that is identifiable in its sameness across speech and writing, there is reason to believe that a ming was mainly used to mean a unit of meaningful sound.² Analyzing the function of ming is a prerequisite for understanding early Chinese theories of “language”—if such a term is even appropriate. Such an analysis will also …

Religious Experiences In New England, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This chapter examines the shifting language of conversion in New England Congregationalism - the bastion of Puritan culture in North America - from the period of settlement in the 1630s to the eve of the Civil War. Evidence is drawn from a database of more than a thousand church-admission narratives from nearly three dozen communities scattered across Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. Throughout this period, most Congregational ministers remained committed to a Calvinist theology that emphasized innate human depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, and irresistible grace. Yet the importance of conversion - the sacred calculus through which God winnowed saints …

Gendered "Relations" In Haverhill, Massachusetts, 1719-1742, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

The two autobiographical narratives- so similar in content, structure, and physical appearance-raise intriguing questions regarding the degree to which Puritan gender norms shaped the religious experiences of laymen and laywomen in early New England. Historians remain divided in their analyses of this issue. Two decades ago Charles Cohen posited a spiritual equality in Reformed theology that rendered "androgynous" the language that laymen and laywomen deployed in the oral church admission testimonies recorded by Cambridge, Massachusetts, minister Thomas Shepard during the seventeenth century. Elizabeth Reis recently challenged Cohen's argument by highlighting the "subtle but significant ways" in which women internalized Puritan …

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 …

Aristotelian Privacy: Perfectionism, Pornography, And The Virtues Of The Polis, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

In the United States privacy is a hot topic, not least because of the current administration's desire to have unbridled access to its citizens' overseas conversations. But in what follows I do not plan to deal directly with any legal or policy concerns. Instead, I am interested in the philosophical foundations,- if any there be, of privacy as something to which individuals and other groups may be entitled. Because much of the discussion of "privacy rights" has revolved around matters sexual, I shall key the discussion to individual access to sexually explicit publications and what limits, if any, moral reflection …

Introduction: Comparative Ethics And The Crucible Of War, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Michael Howard takes the title of his recent essay, The Invention of Peace, from the nineteenth-century jurist and historian of comparative law Henry Maine, who wrote that "war appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modem invention."' We moderns tend to assume that the great wars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were aberrant eruptions marring the peaceful status quo, but the opposite better describes the long view. Outside the Garden of Eden, human communities have always been involved in political conflict and that conflict has regularly escalated to the use of lethal force, both …

The Limits Of The Senses In The Zhongyong, Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

The Zhongyong ends with an odd statement about de 德 (charisma or virtue).² It cites a line from the Book of Songs that appears to say that de resembles a piece of hair—perhaps in being equally light—but the Zhongyong rejects this analogy, noticing that de is without smell or sound.³ This seems to be a strange comment since, while it might be plausible to think of hair as smelling, there seems to be no way around the incongruity of speaking of hair in terms of whether or not it makes sound. Perhaps the passage is attempting to say, …

Introduction To John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, which first appeared in three installments of Fraser's Magazine in 1861, was intended as a defense of the notorious doctrine identified with the liberal reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and with the author's father, James Mill (1773-1836). The defense was successful. While "the principle of utility, or as Bentham has latterly called it, the greatest happiness principle," may have scandalized Victorian England, Mill's Utilitarianism became one of the defining documents of modern British and American liberalism. It is impossible to appreciate contemporary social and political life without coming to grips with utilitarianism.

Introduction To G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica, G. Scott Davis

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

When Principia Ethica appeared, in 1903, it became something of a sacred text for the Cambridge-educated elites-Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes-who, along with Virginia Woolf, would form the core of the Bloomsbury Group. In a letter of October 11, 1903, Strachey confesses to Moore that he is "carried away" by Principia, which inaugurates, for him, "the beginning of the Age of Reason." Moore's critique of convention, his caustic dismissal of his philosophical predecessors, and the relentless rigor of his method promised a revolution in morality commensurate with the modernist transformation of art and literature. Principia Ethica shifted …

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

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.

Guarding Moral Boundaries: Shame In Early Confucianism, Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Claims that China is a ‘‘shame culture’’ tend to presume that guilt is the superior moral motivation. Such claims characterize guilt as internally motivated and operative even if no outsider is aware of any wrongdoing. By contrast, they assume that shame occurs only when someone is observed. The observer represents the moral opinion of an outsider, and, as a result, shame is said to be externally motivated. In this view, genuinely moral motivation is internal. Internality is seen as a requirement for moral autonomy (the ability to make decisions independent of particular social norms), and only guilt cultures are thought …

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.

"A Jornal Of A Fue Days At York": The Great Awakening On The Northern New England Frontier, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

During the early 1740s, New England communities along the northern frontier witnessed a series of religious revivals that were part of a transatlantic movement known as the Great Awakening. Promoted by touring evangelists such as George Whitefield and lesser known local clergyman, the revivals dominated the daily activities of ordinary men and women. Published here for the first time, "Jornal of a fue Days at York, 1741," presents a vivid portrayal of the local dynamics of the Awakening in Maine and New Hampshire. The author of the 'Jornal," an anonymous Boston merchant, chronicled nightly prayer meetings, conversations with pious local …

The Education Of Joseph Prince: Reading Adolescent Culture In Eighteenth-Century New England, Douglas L. Winiarski

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Among the earliest extant manuscripts composed by a New England adolescent, Prince's commonplace book both confirms and modifies existing studies of the transition from childhood to adulthood in early America. Unlike the night-walking youths who appear in revisionist scholarship, Prince never was haled before the Plymouth County court to answer charges of "frolicking" with his cronies. Instead, this dutiful scion of a wealthy and politically powerful southeastern Massachusetts clan spent most of his free time perusing the books in his father's extensive library. Yet the very act of reading held subversive potential. While his parents sought to hone his religious …

Sharing The Light: Representations Of Women And Virtue In Early China, By Lisa Raphals (Book Review), Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Lisa Raphals' Sharing the Light is a useful collection of the latest available information regarding the role of women in early Chinese history. In contrast to conventional interpretations, Raphals aims to demonstrate that in early China women were not as socially constrained as later periods portrayed them. The focus and the main virtue of her work lies in collating and interpreting a significant amount of information on this topic.

The Way Of Water And Sprouts Of Virtue, By Sarah Allan (Book Review), Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Sarah Allan, in The Way of Water and Sprouts of Virtue, explores the premise that linguistic concepts are rooted in culturally specific imagery. Allan argues that in the process of translation the target language inevitably grafts its own imagery onto the concepts of the original language. Therefore the translation process fails to capture the range of meaning and the structural relations between terms in the original language. Allan's work elaborates this point via an analysis of the metaphors related to water and plants in early Chinese philosophical thought.