Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Mcfadden And Gorfinkel's "Constructive Spirit: Quakers In Revolutionary Russia" - Book Review, Maureen Waugh

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Reports And News

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Reports and news for the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies 2014 Annual General Meeting.

Dandelion's "The Creation Of Quaker Theory: Insider Perspectives" - Book Review, Stephen W. Angell

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Birkel's "A Near Sympathy: The Timeless Quaker Vision Of John Woolman" - Book Review, Keith Helmuth

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Viewpoint: Convenience, Consumption And Creatureliness: Thoughts On Sacred Groves, Hindu And Christian, Eliza F. Kent

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

WHEN I was doing field research in India regularly from 2001-2007, I kept hearing an expression for “rich person” I’d never heard before - “vasati-karar,” where “vasati” can be loosely rendered as “convenience.” As the liberalization of India’s economy gained traction in the 2000s, lots of people were acquiring vasatis. Increasingly affordable and accessible consumer items like electric fans and mixie-grinders, cars and laptop computers were making life easier and more comfortable for people across the social spectrum. Temples and churches did not miss out on the boom. Ceiling fans and electric light eased the strain of sitting through long …

Angels And Gods: A (Radically) Orthodox Experiment, Daniel P. Sheridan

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

This is the third in a series of orthodox Catholic theological experiments that I am conducting within the theology of relationship of Catholic faith to other religions. Each experiment attempts to ask a positive, existential question of one of the world religions about the reality of one of their reality assertions. Catholic orthodox theologies have almost always answered these questions in the negative, but in my tentative and provisional judgment the negative answers may be unnecessary. To re-ask the questions using the “eyes of faith,”1 the full weight and depth of orthodoxy must be brought to bear, not as a …

Heller's "The Tendering Presence: Essays On John Woolman" - Book Review, Keith Helmuth

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Hindu Responses To Religious Diversity And The Nature Of Post-Mortem Progress, Ankur Barua

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

THE last two hundred years of Hindu–Christian encounters have produced distinctive forms of Hindu thought which, while often rooted in the broad philosophical-cultural continuities of Vedic outlooks, grappled with, on the one hand, the colonial pressures of European modernity, and, on the other hand, the numerous critiques by Christian theologians and missionaries on the Hindu life-worlds. Thus, the spectrum of Hindu responses from Raja Rammohun Roy through Swami Vivekananda to S. Radhakrishnan demonstrates attempts to creatively engage with Christian representations of Hindu belief and practice, by accepting their prima facie validity at one level while negating their adequacy at another.

Gardina's "Quakers And Baptists In Colonial Massachusetts" - Book Review, Jeanne-Henriette Louis

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Broadcasting Truth To Power:The American Friends Service Committee And The Early Southern Civil Rights Movement, Brian Ward

Quaker Studies

This article addresses two gaps in the historical literature on the modern civil rights movement. First, it highlights the contributions of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) to the struggle for racial justice in the South. Second, it reveals the importance of radio broadcasting in helping to create a climate in which southern white racial attitudes and discriminatory practices were challenged. It demonstrates how AFSC-sponsored broadcasts reflected Quaker principles, but also how debates over appropriate programme content exposed the tensions between principled and pragmatic considerations, morality and expediency, that shaped the Movement and determined the AFSC's role in it.

Violence Against Christians In India: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Two Indian English Newspapers, Clemens Cavallin, Julia Kuhlin

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

During recent decades violence against Christians in India has increased significantly. In spite of this development the issue has received relatively little scholarly attention. Likewise, despite the massive transformation of the newspaper business, which has made contemporary India one of the largest newspaper markets in the world, only few studies have been done on the news coverage of religious minorities in India. In this article, we aim to contribute to both these areas of research. Using a critical discourse analysis, we examine the everyday representation of violence and harassment against Christians in the two largest English daily newspapers in India, …

Thou, That, And An/Other: Hearing Śaṅkara’S Indexicals And Finding Cusa’S Seeking God, Brad Bannon

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

FINGER-pointing is a gesture generally discouraged in polite society. Having someone point a finger at you can be jarring or unsettling. However, if the finger belongs to one’s parent or to a dear and respected teacher, accompanied by an attentive gaze and direct vocative address, the experience can be powerfully awakening. According to the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, such was the experience of a young man whose father-turned-guru spoke to him directly and particularly with the words tattvamasi, Śvetaketo, “Thou art that, O Śvetaketu.”2

The intimacy of this encounter between father and son is easily overlooked, despite its familiarity to those who …

Reluctant Absolutist: Malcolm Sparkes' Conscientious Objections To World War I, Bert Den Boggende

Quaker Studies

The existing secondary literature has treated the appearance of World War I conscientious objectors (COs) before the tribunals as rather straightforward and uncomplicated. As the case of Malcolm Sparkes indicates, the process was much less straightforward and much more complex. The arduous process also shows that the power of the local tribunals was enlarged and that of the Pelham Committee reduced, due to the wrong decision - as the government acknowledged - by the local tribunal at Slough. The decision resulted in Sparkes becoming a reluctant or alternativist absolutist, a nomenclature hitherto ignored in the literature. Sparkes' case also suggests …

The Persecution Of 'An Innocent People' In Seventeenth-Century England, Raymond Ayoub

Quaker Studies

This article gives an outline survey of the beliefs and practices of seventeenth century Friends, the spiritual-religious basis of these, the existing or enacted laws with which these came into conflict, and the ensuing penalties inflicted on Friends for disobeying these strictures. While there is an abundance of relevant material in print, this account endeavors to give a comprehensive and systematic summary of the pertinent laws and some of their consequences to Friends. Though the penalties were not of equal frequency or severity, they point to limitations placed on Friends in their effort to be faithful to their beliefs.

Between And Beyond Canons: Mirabai And Hadewijch In Relation To Scripture And The Self, Holly Hillgardner

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Mirabai, a sixteenth century bhakta, wrote passionate songs of her desire for God. Burning for him, she employed the genre of viraha-bhakti, a mystical eroticism of longing from the Vaiṣṇava tradition, as she begged for him to “[c]ome and extinguish the fire of separation.” Hadewijch, a thirteenth-century Beguine from low-country Europe, wrote poems, letters, and prose that tell of her longing to become Love itself—to be “God with God.” Despite their myriad differences across traditions, miles, and years, Hadewijch and Mirabai can each be said to practice love-longing as her primary contemplative mode.

Preaching For Hire: Public Issues And Private Concerns In A Skirmish Of The Lamb's War, Jonathan Harlow

Quaker Studies

Quakers from the first rejected the idea of the professional minister requiring university education and being paid for his work. This was a principal motif in the Lamb's War they waged in the 1650s; and it naturally aroused the hostility of established ministers, who had good reason to feel insecure. This article examines a brief battle of books which took place in 1656 and 1657: Thomas Speed, a leading Bristol Quaker, fulminated against preaching for hire and three incumbent ministers countered his attacks. It turns out that the participants were known to each other and had personal axes to grind. …

Interiority And Connectivity: A Brief Comparative Study On The Relation Of Scripture And Contemplation In Bridal Mysticism And Krishna Bhakti, Graham M. Schweig

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

In this study I bring two disparate traditions together which have painted portraits of divinity as a divine lover and supreme beloved. One tradition is from sixteenth century Europe and the other from sixteenth century India. My focus here is on the function of contemplative experience and vision in relation to the scriptural depictions and descriptions of divine love within both Carmelite Catholicism and Caitanya Vaishnavism through the developed visions in the sixteenth century works of Saint John of the Cross and Krishnadāsa Kaviraja Goswami, respectively.

An Absent Presence: Quaker Narratives Of Journeys To America And Barbados, 1671-81, Hilary Hinds

Quaker Studies

Through case studies of writings by George Fox, Alice Curwen and Joan Vokins, this article identifies a marked discrepancy in style and focus between early Quaker accounts of journeys to the American mainland and to Barbados. Accounts of the mainland journeys are detailed and often dramatic narratives which, like most early Quaker writing, read the spiritual in and from the places and people encountered, whilst those concerned with Barbados are brief, bland and apparently unconcerned with the immanence of God in the material and social world. An explanation for this discrepancy is sought in the particular cultural and social circumstances …

On The Scholar’S Contribution To The Contemplative Work Of Hindu-Christian Studies, Francis X. Clooney

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

The following contribution to the Journal is admittedly out of the ordinary. While inscribing my actual contribution to the panel, “Canons and Contemplations: The Intersections of Scripture, Contemplation, and Community,” within this slightly larger document, it also reports on my contribution to email conversations among the panelists beforehand, and reproduces extracts from the prologue and epilogue of my new book. It is a multilevel document, aiming at a multilevel reflection on how we write from either side and across the Hindu-Christian religious and scholarly borders. There are two introductions: “the preliminary comment” written for the readers of the Journal, and …

Editorial (Quaker Studies Volume 10, Issue 1), Ben Dandelion

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Editor’S Introduction, Bradley Malkovsky

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

The main theme of this year’s issue, “Canons and Contemplations,” examines the ways in which contemporary comparativists, writing on spiritual texts, can contribute to a contemplative re-reading of ancient Hindu and Christian literary traditions. Today’s scholar might opt not only to report about the spiritual writings of the past in a purely academic fashion, but may also choose – through an engaged reading of the texts – to make her own contribution to these ongoing traditions of contemplation and wisdom. Academic writing can itself become contemplative practice.

Table Of Contents

Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

A list of the article contents in this issue.

Ambler's "Churches, Chapels And The Parish Communities Of Lincolnshire 1660-1900" - Book Review, Roger Homan

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Speicher's "The Religious World Of Antislavery Women", Sandra Holton

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Yannessa's "Levi Coffin, Quaker: Breaking The Bonds Of Slavery In Ohio And Indiana" - Book Review, Emma J. Lapsansky

Quaker Studies

No abstract provided.

Quaker Beliefs: Diverse Yet Distinctive, Rosamund Bourke

Quaker Studies

The aim of the research was to obtain the views of Quakers about their beliefs. 166 members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) responded to a questionnaire about Quaker faith and practice. The respondents largely agreed with traditional Quaker beliefs. As might be expected from previous studies, a diversity of views was found and it was not possible to calculate an 'index of Quakerism'. Eighty percent were over the age of 50. Their attitudes to religion were probably formed before the changes in cultural values of the latter half of the twentieth century.

How Successful Were Quakers At Science?, Geoffrey Cantor

Quaker Studies

The impressively high proportion of Quakers in the Royal Society has often been cited to support the claim that Quakers have been far more successful at science than the general population. However, this supporting evidence is shown to be highly problematic and demonstrably false. Moreover, attempts to establish the superiority of Quakers in science have diverted attention away from more interesting and important historical questions.

Victorian Philanthropy And The Rowntrees: The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Mark Freeman

Quaker Studies

Through an examination of the establishment and early grant-making priorities of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, this article explores the development of Quaker philanthropy in Britain in the Victorian and Edwardian periods, especially in the context of the long-standing Quaker interest in adult education. It locates Joseph Rowntree's view of philanthropy in the wider contexts of the changing patterns of Victorian and Edwardian philanthropic theory and practice, the nineteenth-century growth of Quaker social concern, and the changing perceptions of the problem of poverty during Rowntree's lifetime. It argues that the motives underlying the establishment of the Charitable Trust were predicated …

America's Learning About Foreign Places Through The Eyes Of Missionaries: Writings In The Friends' Missionary Advocate, 1885-1933, Stanley D. Brunn, Elizabeth J. Leppman

Quaker Studies

Missionaries were among the travelers who supplied American adults and children with information about foreign places. Because they enjoyed a high status and respect with their home congregations and because they lived among peoples in foreign, often exotic, lands, missionaries and their writings enjoyed a wide and attentive audience. Materials in The Friends' Missionary Advocate between 1885 and 1933 report that information on foreign regions reached American audiences through presentations at monthly and quarterly meetings and at yearly conferences. Articles, letters, reports, maps, and pictures were also a medium for influencing Americans' impressions of the world.

An Occupational Analysis Of The Society Of Friends In Nineteenth-Century Scotland, Paul F. Burton

Quaker Studies

This paper summarizes our knowledge of the occupational background of English Quakers as a preliminary to an analysis of the occupations of Scottish Quakers in the nineteenth century, based upon the primary sources of records of births, marriages and burials. The same increase in middle-class occupations, including the professions, is evident in Scotland, but the process of embourgeoisement seems to have been slower in Scotland, and by the end of the nineteenth- century merchants and retailers were the largest group in the Society there, rather than the professions. There is also evidence of regional variations in the occupations noted.