scholarly journals Freedom to Know Me: The Conflict between Identity and Mennonite Culture in Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Rita Dirks
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Negative Freedom ◽  
Positive Freedom ◽  
Low German ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
East Village ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Culture

In Miriam Toews’s A Complicated Kindness (2004; Giller Prize finalist; winner of Canada's Governor General's Award) Nomi Nickel, a sixteen-year-old Mennonite girl from southern Manitoba, Canada, tells the story of her short life before her excommunication from the closed community of the fictional East Village. East Village is based on a real town in southern Manitoba called Steinbach (where Toews was born), where Mennonite culture remains segregated from the rest of the world to protect its distinctive Anabaptist Protestantism and to keep its language, Mennonite Low German or Plattdeutsch, a living language, one which is both linguistically demotic yet ethnically hieratic because of its role in Mennonite faith. Since the Reformation, and more precisely the work of Menno Simons after whom this ethno-religious group was christened, Mennonites have used their particular brand of Low German to separate themselves from the rest of humankind. Toews constructs her novel as a multilingual narrative, to represent the cultural and religious tensions within. Set in the early 1980s, A Complicated Kindness details the events that lead up to Nomi’s excommunication, or shunning; Nomi’s exclusion is partly due to her embracing of the “English” culture through popular, mostly 1970s, music and books such as J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Insofar as Toews’s novel presents the conflict between the teenaged narrator and the patriarchal, conservative Mennonite culture, the books stands at the crossroads of negative and positive freedom. Put succinctly, since the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation, Mennonites have sought negative freedom, or freedom from persecution, yet its own tenets foreclose on the positive freedom of its individual members. This problem reaches its most intense expression in contemporary Mennonitism, both in Canada and in the EU, for Mennonite culture returns constantly to its founding precepts, even through the passage of time, coupled with diasporic history. Toews presents this conflict between this early modern religious subculture and postmodern liberal democracy through the eyes of a sarcastic, satirical Nomi, who, in this Bildungsroman, must solve the dialectic of her very identity: literally, the negative freedom of No Me or positive freedom of Know Me. As Mennonite writing in Canada is a relatively new phenomenon, about 50 years old, the question for those who call themselves Mennonite writers arises in terms of deciding between new, migrant, separate-group writing and writing as English-speaking Canadians.

scholarly journals Trumpism and the Dialectic of Neoliberal Reason

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (02) ◽  
pp. 380-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Lebow
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Instrumental Reason ◽  
Negative Freedom ◽  
Positive Freedom ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
The World ◽  
Culture Market ◽  
Democratic Norms

Guided by the thesis that fascism was the outcome of a dialectic of instrumental reason, I argue that Trumpism is the result of a dialectic of neoliberal reason. The 2008 crisis revealed that widely distributed consumption could no longer be sustained through escalating debt, as it had been since neoliberalizing reforms in the 1970s. Economic crisis has been interpreted through a culture market in which pseudo-individual consumers choose what hyperreal public they prefer and participate in pseudo-activity through social media. Retreat into insular hyperrealities and hostility to dissonant alternatives reinforce each other in an escalating logic generating partisan incivility and fake news. The de-democratization of the state through subservience to private interests and political dysfunction has combined with the consumer’s uncompromising mentality as a dissatisfied customer to channel politicization into populism. It aggregates negatively through shared dissatisfaction, driving escalating antagonism between technocratic responsibility and populist responsiveness. These escalating economic, cultural, and political contradictions heighten negative “freedom from” restraints while subverting positive “freedom to” relate meaningfully to the world. This intensifies anxieties and receptivity to authoritarianism as a self-defeating escape from neoliberal freedom. Trumpism exploits precarity, corrupts democratic norms, and licenses misdirected aggression. This neoliberal authoritarianism is inverted fascism. Trump’s presidency is more effect than cause.

scholarly journals Experiência religiosa: da Reforma Protestante ao avivamento pentecostal

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulo Jonas Dos Santos Júnior ◽  
André Luís Da Rosa
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Pentecostal Movement ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Precise Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
New Perspective

Resumo: Para uma análise precisa da atual sociedade como um produto humanohistoricamente construído, é necessário considerar a Reforma Protestantecomo um dos seus principais marcos. A experiência religiosa é o que dá origema qualquer fenômeno religioso, que posteriormente é organizado em ritos e doutrinas.Nessa perspectiva, é mister observar que os principais acontecimentosoriundos da Reforma são frutos de uma nova perspectiva da relação entre o fiele o sagrado. Esta é caracterizada, principalmente, pela relação individual entreo fiel e o sagrado, livre das mediações da Igreja Católica Romana. No séculoXX, surgiu no meio protestante o Movimento Pentecostal, que transformou ocenário cristão mundial com sua nova vivência do sagrado, denominada batismono Espírito Santo.Palavras-chave: Experiência religiosa. Protestantismo. Pentecostalismo.Abstract: For a precise analysis of the present society as a human producthistorically constructed, it’s necessary to envisage the Protestant Reformation asone of its principal landmarks. Religious experience gives origin to any religiousphenomenon, which is afterwards organized in rites and doctrines. In this perspective,it’s necessary to observe that the main results from the Reformation arefruits from a new perspective of the relation between the faithful and the sacred.This is characterized mainly by an individual relation, free from the mediations ofthe Roman Catholic Church. In the XX century, aroused in the protestant milieuthe Pentecostal Movement, which transformed the world Christian scenery withits new experience of the sacred, called the baptism in the holy Spirit.Keywords: Religious experience. Protestantism. Pentecostalism.

scholarly journals A Tulip in the Roman Curia: Proposing Novel Acronyms for Arminian and Lutheran Theology

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-35
Author(s):  
Sean Welsh
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Lutheran Theology ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
God’S Foreknowledge

The paradoxical relationships between free will, salvific grace, and human depravity have a perplexed man for thousands of years. In the early days of the Christian Church, Catholics affirmed the free will of man while emphasizing that God was not bound by time. This meant that, although the man was a free moral agent, God’s foreknowledge of past, present, and future allowed Him to know the “elect” before the foundation of the world. During the Protestant Reformation, new systems of theology were posited to explain the relationship between these concepts. The three most important of these theological systems are Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Arminianism. In the English-speaking world, Calvinism has become the best-known and most easily-grasped Protestant theological system due to the ingenious mnemonic TULIP, i.e., total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints, to describe the five points of Calvinism. The purpose of this paper is to propose two new mnemonics to describe the theological systems of Lutheranism and Arminianism. These mnemonics are couched in the language of Calvinism for simplicity. For Lutheran theology, the acronym TAURUS is proposed. For Arminian theology, the acronym CURIA is proposed.

scholarly journals The affirmation of image and maps in the modern age: cartographic secularization and Protestant Reformation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Ricci
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
Artistic Images ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe contribution aims to focus the attention on the consequences on the use of images and in particular on the cartographic ones deriving from the Protestant Reformation. Analysing the debate around images which originated during the sixteenth century from Luther’s revolution, the article tries to answer how much the Reformation contributed to change the main aspects of mapmaking in a more realistic and secularized way. Three main questions will be posed: how much did the Protestant Reformation contribute to the affirmation of the cartographic images, to the pushes towards realism and to reality? How much did the way of representing the world change, standing on the innovations promoted by the European Protestants? Did the Reformation have also consequences on the Counter-Reformation way of depicting maps? Starting from the main literature, which focused the attention on the effects of that debate about the artistic images, a parallelism with the use of new cartographic models will be proposed, wondering if the Reformation contributed to the modern way of mapmaking, overpassing the religious, metaphorical of the medieval models.

Metaphysics in the Reformation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvianne Aspray
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Reformation Theology ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Metaphysical Position ◽  
Ontological Relationship

Because the magisterial reformers largely rejected metaphysical discourses, is often assumed that the Protestant Reformation had no metaphysics. However, if metaphysics is understood as the ontological relationship between God and the world, how could any theological work not be at least implicitly metaphysical? This book argues that the avowedly anti-metaphysical stance of many reformers is itself a metaphysical position, and that teasing out the implicit metaphysics in their worldviews is both possible and worthwhile despite – or even because of – their insistent denials that they have any such thing. Metaphysics in the Reformation proposes a novel methodology for studying the implied metaphysics of the Reformation, focussing on implied structures of being and causality. It then applies this methodology to the under-researched work of Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499–1562). Analysing four main areas of Vermigli’s theology – his anthropology, his soteriology, his doctrine of the Eucharist, and his political theology – the book argues that in his theology, Vermigli simultaneously inhabits two different metaphysical models of the relationship between God and the world. The book contends that by extension, this holds true of Reformation theology more generally.

scholarly journals THE REFORMATION AND ‘THE DISENCHANTMENT OF THE WORLD’ REASSESSED

2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 497-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRA WALSHAM
Keyword(s):  
Max Weber ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Linear Path ◽  
European Context ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World

ABSTRACTThis essay is a critical historiographical overview of the ongoing debate about the role of the Protestant Reformation in the process of ‘the disenchantment of the world’. It considers the development of this thesis in the work of Max Weber and subsequent scholars, its links with wider claims about the origins of modernity, and the challenges to this influential paradigm that have emerged in the last twenty-five years. Setting the literature on England within its wider European context, it explores the links between Protestantism and the transformation of assumptions about the sacred and the supernatural, and places renewed emphasis on the equivocal and ambiguous legacy left by the upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Attention is also paid to the ways in which the Reformation converged with other intellectual, cultural, political, and social developments which cumulatively brought about subtle, but decisive, transformations in individual and collective mentalities. It is suggested that thinking in terms of cycles of desacralization and resacralization may help to counteract the potential distortions of a narrative that emphasizes a linear path of development.

The Legacy of Iraq

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
The World ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
Market Capitalism

This book critically reflects on the failure of the 2003 intervention to turn Iraq into a liberal democracy, underpinned by free-market capitalism, its citizens free to live in peace and prosperity. The book argues that mistakes made by the coalition and the Iraqi political elite set a sequence of events in motion that have had devastating consequences for Iraq, the Middle East and for the rest of the world. Today, as the nation faces perhaps its greatest challenge in the wake of the devastating advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and another US-led coalition undertakes renewed military action in Iraq, understanding the complex and difficult legacies of the 2003 war could not be more urgent. Ignoring the legacies of the Iraq War and denying their connection to contemporary events could mean that vital lessons are ignored and the same mistakes made again.

Ghost, Broken Narratives and the Art of Dying

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
Lars Rømer
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
Art Of Dying ◽  
The Dead

This article investigates how experiences of ghosts can be seen as a series of broken narratives. By using cases from contemporary as well 19th century Denmark I will argue that ghosts enter the world of the living as sensations that question both common sense understanding and problematize the unfinished death. Although ghosts have been in opposition to both science and religion in Denmark at least since the reformation I will exemplify how people deal with the broken narrative of ghosts in ways that incorporate and mimic techniques of both the scientist and the priest. Ghosts, thus, initiate a dialogue between the dead and the living concerning the art of dying that will enable both to move on.

scholarly journals Twenty Years of Men and Masculinities by the Numbers: An Analysis of Publications and Article Keywords

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-15
Author(s):  
Robert T. Cserni ◽  
Lee W. Essig
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Men And Masculinities

In this article we begin to map the field of Men and Masculinities Studies by examining 20 years of publications in the journal of Men and Masculinities. We conduct a content analysis of 458 articles and 2115 keywords from 1998 to 2017. Our findings indicate similar numbers of women and men published sole-authored articles. The most prevalent themes among published articles were related to theory, sexualities, and family. Furthermore, non-English speaking regions in the world are under-represented compared to English speaking regions. We hope that our discussion of these, and other findings, will help (re)shape the field and the journal of Men and Masculinities into a more diverse and inclusive academic space.

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