Image as Insight: Visual Understanding in Western Christianity and Secular Culture

1987 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 123
Author(s):  
Jerry H. Stone ◽  
Margaret R. Miles
1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Christine Havice ◽  
Margaret R. Miles

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 190-212
Author(s):  
Margaret Schabas

AbstractDavid Hume wrote prolifically and influentially on economics and was an enthusiast for the modern commercial era of manufacturing and global trade. As a vocal critic of the Church, and possibly a nonbeliever, Hume positioned commerce at the vanguard of secularism. I here argue that Hume broached ideas that gesture toward those offered by Max Weber in his famous Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5). Hume discerned a strong correlation between economic flourishing and Protestantism, and he pointed to a “spirit of the age” that was built on modern commerce and fueled by religious tolerance. The Roman Catholic Church, by contrast, came under considerable attack by Hume, for fostering intolerance and draining and diverting funds. Hume recognized several of the dispositions that later appealed to Weber: an increased work ethic and tendency to frugality, enterprise, and investment in Protestant regions. A neo-Weberian literature now points to additional factors, the spread of literacy and the fostering of a network of trust among strangers, both of which Hume noted. Insofar as modern commerce both feeds upon and fosters more liberties and representative government, Hume also linked these with the advent and spread of Protestantism. My aim is not to suggest that these arguments have merit—there is good reason to question each and every assertion under the historical microscope—but rather to highlight the broader religious and cultural context in which Hume’s economics was broached.


Author(s):  
Zifeng Wang ◽  
Yuyang Zhang ◽  
Khalid M. Mosalam ◽  
Yuqing Gao ◽  
Shao‐Lun Huang

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 858-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hollinger

If we are going to explain the slow pace of de-Christianization for the United States relative to other industrialized societies in the North Atlantic West, we might well begin with the church-state relationship. The absence of an established church in the United States has enabled religious affiliation to function, like other voluntary organizations in “civil society,” as mediators between the individual and the nation. I conimented on this rather old idea in a book C. John Sommerville is kind enough to cite in another connection, Science, Jews, and Secular Culture, but since he does not take up this point, I will develop it a bit further here, before reacting to Sommerville's other concerns as expressed in his refreshingly fair-minded rejoinder to my essay in the March 2001 issue of Church History.


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