THE CHURCH IN THE SOCIAL ORDER A Study of Anglican Social Theory From Coleridge to Maurice By Cyril K. Gloyn. Forest Grove, Ore: Pacific University, 1942. 201 pages. $1.50.

How can theologians recognize the church as a historical and human community, while still holding that it has been established by Christ and is a work of the Spirit? How can a theological account of the church draw insights and concepts from the social sciences, without Christian commitments and claims about the church being undermined or displaced? In 1927, the 21-year-old Dietrich Bonhoeffer defended his licentiate dissertation, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church. This remains his most neglected and misunderstood work. Christ Existing as Community thus retrieves and analyses Bonhoeffer’s engagement with social theory and attempt at ecclesiology. Against standard readings and criticisms of this work, Mawson demonstrates that it contains a rich and nuanced approach to the church, one which displays many of Bonhoeffer’s key influences—especially Luther, Hegel, Troeltsch, and Barth—while being distinctive in its own right. In particular, Mawson argues that Sanctorum Communio’s theology is built around a complex dialectic of creation, sin, and reconciliation. On this basis, he contends that Bonhoeffer’s dissertation has ongoing significance for work in theology and Christian ethics.

Download Full-text

Walter Rauschenbusch and the Brotherhood of the Kingdom

Church History ◽

10.2307/3160676 ◽

1938 ◽

Vol 7 (2) ◽

pp. 138-155 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

C. Howard Hopkins

Keyword(s):

Social Order ◽

Society Of Jesus ◽

Spanish American ◽

Spanish American War ◽

Storm And Stress ◽

The Social ◽

Walter Rauschenbusch ◽

Jacob Riis ◽

Manchester School ◽

The Church

The Brotherhood of the Kingdom was organized in December, 1892, by a small group of converts to the ideal of the kingdom of God on earth who, not unmindful of the examples of St. Francis and of the Society of Jesus, planned to reestablish the idea of the kingdom “in the thought of the church and to assist in its practical realization in the world.” The year 1892 had witnessed a rising crescendo of social turbulence and political unrest throughout America. In the midwest the populist revolt was growing, while industrial warfare had broken out in the violent Homestead strike at the Carnegie steel plants. Jacob Riis had opened wide the festering tenements of the great cities in his revelation of How the Other Half Lives, while in intellectual circles the younger economists were rebelling against the tenets of the Manchester school. William Jennings Bryan's campaign for free silver was only four years away, and the Spanish–American War but six years in the future. Into such an atmosphere of storm and stress was born the Brotherhood of the Kingdom, dedicated to the realization of a spiritual ideal in the social order.

Download Full-text

Changing the Pattern: Reclaiming History, Constructing Herstory in Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace

Folia linguistica et litteraria ◽

10.31902/fll.26.2019.10 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 107-122

Author(s):

Ana Sentov

Keyword(s):

Working Class ◽

Social Order ◽

Medical Profession ◽

Social Structures ◽

Immigrant Status ◽

Relevant Today ◽

The Social ◽

Female Protagonist ◽

The Media ◽

The Church

This paper will examine how Grace Marks, the female protagonist/narrator of Alias Grace (1996), reclaims her history, which is comprised of many different, often contradictory stories of her life and the crime for which she is imprisoned. These stories reflect the dominant discourse of a conservative male-dominated society, in which Grace is an outsider, due to her gender, class, age, and immigrant status. The law, the medical profession, the church, and the media all see Grace as a disruptive element: a woman who committed or assisted in a murder, a lunatic and/or a member of the working class who dared disturb the social order. Grace is revealed not as a passive victim, an object to be acted upon, but as an agent capable of reclaiming history and constructing herstory, challenging and defying the expectations of dominant social structures. The paper will show that Alias Grace, as a novel giving voice to the marginalized and the silenced, stands as a compelling work that examines and provides insights into the position of women and its changes over the course of history, provoking a discourse that remains relevant today

Download Full-text

Imaginary and Rational: From Social Theory to Social Order

Ideas and Ideals ◽

10.17212/2075-0862-2021-13.4.1-168-179 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (4-1) ◽

pp. 168-179

Author(s):

Elena Erokhina ◽

Keyword(s):

Social Theory ◽

Social Constructivism ◽

Social Order ◽

Social Imaginary ◽

Research Strategies ◽

Social Imagination ◽

Public Expectations ◽

The Social ◽

The World ◽

New Research

The article is devoted to the analysis of imagination as a philosophical and sociological concept that played a significant role in the development of social theory in the middle of the 20th century. Exploring the premises of the contradictory relationship between science and society, it is easy to find a connection between the development of science and social change. Currently, it is generally accepted that scientific, including social theories, through the transfer of ideas, transform the social order and, on the contrary, social practices transform knowledge about the world. The article proves that imagination plays a key role in this process. An excursion into the theory of ideas reveals the connection between imagination and irrational and experiential knowledge. The author of the article refers to the works of P. Berger and T. Luckmann, C. Castoriadis and C. Taylor, who showed a direct connection between theoretical ideas and the world of "social imaginary", collective imaginary and social changes. For the first time in the history of mankind, thanks to imagination, society does not see the social order as something immutable. Methodological cases are presented that illustrate the specific role of the concept of imagination as a source of the formation of new research strategies that allow for a new look at the problem of nationalism (social constructivism) and the study of public expectations from the implementation of technological innovations (STS). For decades, Benedict Anderson's work “Imagined Communities” predetermined the interest of researchers of nationalism in social imagination and the collective ideas based on it about the national identity of modern societies, their history and geography. The research of Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim has formed a new track for the study of science as a collective product of public expectations of an imaginary social order, embodied in technological projects. The conclusion is made about the contradictory nature of social expectations based on collective imagination: on the one hand, they strengthen the authority of science in society, on the other hand, they provoke the growth of negative expectations from the introduction of scientific discoveries. The article substantiates the opinion that imagination is an effective tool for assessing the risks of introducing innovations.

Download Full-text

Recovering critique in an age of datafication

New Media & Society ◽

10.1177/1461444820912536 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 22 (7) ◽

pp. 1135-1151

Author(s):

Nick Couldry

Keyword(s):

Social Science ◽

Social Theory ◽

Network Theory ◽

Social Order ◽

Science And Technology Studies ◽

Final Section ◽

Actor Network Theory ◽

Social World ◽

The Social ◽

Key Questions

This article starts out from the need for critical work on processes of datafication and their consequences for the constitution of social knowledge and the social world. Current social science work on datafication has been greatly shaped by the theoretical approach of Bruno Latour, as reflected in the work of Actor Network Theory and Science and Technology Studies (ANT/STS). The article asks whether this approach, given its philosophical underpinnings, provides sufficient resources for the critical work that is required in relation to datafication. Drawing on Latour’s own reflections about the flatness of the social, it concludes that it does not, since key questions, in particular about the nature of social order cannot be asked or answered within ANT. In the article’s final section, three approaches from earlier social theory are considered as possible supplements to ANT/STS for a social science serious about addressing the challenges that datafication poses for society.

Download Full-text

The English Roman Catholic Bishops and The Social Order, 1918–26

Recusant History ◽

10.1017/s0034193200030351 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 25 (3) ◽

pp. 543-564

Author(s):

Kester Aspden

Keyword(s):

Working Class ◽

Social Order ◽

Roman Catholic ◽

Pastoral Letter ◽

Political Views ◽

The Social ◽

Two Sides ◽

General Strike ◽

The Church

It is ironic that it should have been the leader of the church with the greatest proportion of working-class members who took up the most hostile stance to the General Strike of 1926. While Francis Bourne (1862–1935), Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, won the plaudits of the Establishment for his unambiguous denunciation of the strike, that cautious septuagenarian Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, found himself cast in the unlikely role of the workers’ friend after his illstarred attempt to conciliate the two sides. Sheridan Gilley has highlighted another contrast: while in 1926 Bourne found himself sharply opposed to labour, in a 1918 pastoral letter he had been insistent that the Church should reach an accommodation with the ‘modern labour unrest’. While Gilley implies that his General Strike condemnation was uncharacteristic, Buchanan suggests that this was closer to expressing his ‘real political views’ than his 1918 statement. This article aims to provide a closer examination of the shift in Bourne’s attitude, and to consider the broader episcopal response to social and political questions during these fraught years.

Download Full-text