scholarly journals Religion and Politics in William Steel Dickson DD (1744–1824): Ulster-Scot Irishman and his Modernizing Thought-World

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-67
Author(s):  
W. Ian P. Hazlett

This essay presents the lineaments and origins of the core thinking of Steel Dickson, a typically controversial representative of the progressive eighteenth-century intelligentsia in the north of Ireland who were Presbyterian ministers and inclined to radicalising reform of politics and religion as well as, more tentatively, to the reformatting of fundamental theology. There will be reference to short studies and general interpretations of Dickson and, more particularly, some analysis of his publications including religio-political addresses and church sermons. Discussed will be the context of his association with the Society of United Irishmen and its evolving revolutionary path, as well as his links to other reform thinkers, politicians and churchmen in Ulster. The study argues that Steel Dickson's varied political involvement flowed consciously from his ethical and religious convictions. Further, that he embodied (with qualification) the impact of the Scottish Enlightenment and ‘Moderate’ Presbyterianism in Ireland – but along with strong appeal to biblical testimony and norms. Finally, it demonstrates with illustrations that the decisive shaping and reconstructing of the contours of Dickson's mind occurred during his studies at Glasgow University in its intellectual heyday.

Author(s):  
Robert H. Ellison

Prompted by the convulsions of the late eighteenth century and inspired by the expansion of evangelicalism across the North Atlantic world, Protestant Dissenters from the 1790s eagerly subscribed to a millennial vision of a world transformed through missionary activism and religious revival. Voluntary societies proliferated in the early nineteenth century to spread the gospel and transform society at home and overseas. In doing so, they engaged many thousands of converts who felt the call to share their experience of personal conversion with others. Though social respectability and business methods became a notable feature of Victorian Nonconformity, the religious populism of the earlier period did not disappear and religious revival remained a key component of Dissenting experience. The impact of this revitalization was mixed. On the one hand, growth was not sustained in the long term and, to some extent, involvement in interdenominational activity undermined denominational identity; on the other hand, Nonconformists gained a social and political prominence they had not enjoyed since the middle of the seventeenth century and their efforts laid the basis for the twentieth-century explosion of evangelicalism in Africa, Asia, and South America.


Author(s):  
Mary Elizabeth Fitts

Chapter 3 documents the emergence, composition, and political interactions of the Catawba Nation through the mid-eighteenth century. Between the Spanish incursions of the 1560s and the establishment of Charles Town in 1670, a group of Catawba Valley Mississippians known as Yssa rose to become the powerful Nation of Esaws that formed the core of the eighteenth-century Catawba Nation. In the late seventeenth century this polity was a destination for European traders as well as American Indian refugees fleeing hostilities associated with the Indian Slave trade and settler territorial expansion. While many of these refugees were from the Catawba River Valley, others—most notably the Charraw—were Piedmont Siouans who fled southward from the North Carolina-Virginia border. The incorporation of refugees had significant implications for Catawba politics and daily life, which are explored in subsequent chapters.


Author(s):  
Maryam Wasif Khan

Who is a Muslim? Orientalism and Literary Populisms argues that modern Urdu literature, from its inception in colonial institutions such as Fort William College, Calcutta, to its dominant forms in contemporary Pakistan—popular novels, short stories, television serials—is formed around a question that is and historically has been at the core of early modern and modern Western literatures. The question—who is a Muslim—is predominant in eighteenth-century literary and scholarly orientalist texts, the English oriental tale chief amongst them, but takes on new and dangerous meanings once it travels to the North-Indian colony, and later to Pakistan. A literary-historical study spanning some three centuries, this book argues that the modern Urdu literary formation, far from secular or progressive, has been shaped as the authority designate on the intertwined questions of piety, national identity, and citizenship, first in colonial India and subsequently in contemporary Pakistan.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-89
Author(s):  
Roman Slobodník ◽  
Jozef Chavko ◽  
Jozef Lengyel ◽  
Michal Noga ◽  
Boris Maderič ◽  
...  

Abstract The population of the red-footed falcon in Slovakia inhabits the north-western edge of the species' breeding range. This breeding population is relatively small and came near to extinction during the population decline of this species in central Europe in recent decades. Thanks to increasing numbers of breeding pairs in Hungary, the Slovak population began to grow again. Moreover, some differences in breeding biology associated with breeding in nest boxes were found. Here we describe the dependence of the small isolated breeding population in Slovakia on the core population in the more eastern parts of the Carpathian Basin, and the impact of supporting activities (nest boxes) on this raptor species in Slovakia.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 197-210
Author(s):  
Ejiroghene Augustine Oghuvbu

This study examines the roles religion and politics play in the “boko haram” insurgency. In Nigeria, politics and religion occupy a central space. While the two individually generate a plethora of events of varying levels and implications for Nigeria, religion and politics often create a mixture of circumstances and occurrences. The boko haram insurgency is one of the many entities that represent the combustible nature of politics and religion in Nigeria. Its activities in the North-East have constituted a challenge to Nigeria’s security. The study adopts the human needs theory to explain boko haram insurgency and its effects on reli-gion and politics in Nigeria. The study employs the qualitative method and relies on sec-ondary sources of data. Specifically, the study draws data from books, book chapters, jour-nals, conference proceedings, newspapers, and online sources. These data are analysed with the use of thematic analysis, to structure the arrangement of the data retrieved by follow-ing the objectives of the study. The findings of the study reveal that corruption, radical islam, and poor governance played salient roles in the development of the boko haram sect. In line with these findings, the study recommends that the government must curtail and ultimately defeat the boko haram insurgency. The author recommends that the govern-ment intensifies its intelligence activities in order to fighting boko haram.


Author(s):  
Alan Montgomery

Classical Caledonia explores eighteenth-century attitudes towards Scotland’s ancient history and heritage, looking in particular at how Roman Scotland was interpreted at this time. It discusses the research of early modern antiquarians and historians both north and south of the border and looks at how Scotland’s ancient past was often misinterpreted and manipulated in attempts to create a new national identity for a country undergoing rapid and dramatic change. The book uncovers the political, patriotic and intellectual influences which fuelled the heated eighteenth-century debates surrounding the success or failure of the Roman conquests of Scotland, a place sometimes referred to in ancient sources as ‘Caledonia’, and the disagreements regarding the impact of Roman invasion on the evolution of the modern nation. Analysing the period’s historiography, antiquarianism, political propaganda and literature, Classical Caledonia investigates the widespread interest in Scotland’s Roman past during the eighteenth century and reveals the influence of folklore, myth and tradition on the accounts of Scotland’s ancient tribes and their supposed resistance to conquest by the Roman Empire. It also examines the fading interest in the subject of Roman Scotland in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as the Scottish Enlightenment and the rise of Romanticism and associated notions of the nation’s origins overtook the desire to establish a classical heritage in the region north of Hadrian’s Wall.


2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (136) ◽  
pp. 339-356
Author(s):  
Tobias Wölfle ◽  
Oliver Schöller

Under the term “Hilfe zur Arbeit” (aid for work) the federal law of social welfare subsumes all kinds of labour disciplining instruments. First, the paper shows the historical connection of welfare and labour disciplining mechanisms in the context of different periods within capitalist development. In a second step, against the background of historical experiences, we will analyse the trends of “Hilfe zur Arbeit” during the past two decades. It will be shown that by the rise of unemployment, the impact of labour disciplining aspects of “Hilfe zur Arbeit” has increased both on the federal and on the municipal level. For this reason the leverage of the liberal paradigm would take place even in the core of social rights.


2005 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Kidd

Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) made several iconoclastic interventions in the field of Scottish history. These earned him a notoriety in Scottish circles which, while not undeserved, has led to the reductive dismissal of Trevor-Roper's ideas, particularly his controversial interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment, as the product of Scotophobia. In their indignation Scottish historians have missed the wider issues which prompted Trevor-Roper's investigation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a fascinating case study in European cultural history. Notably, Trevor-Roper used the example of Scotland to challenge Weberian-inspired notions of Puritan progressivism, arguing instead that the Arminian culture of north-east Scotland had played a disproportionate role in the rise of the Scottish Enlightenment. Indeed, working on the assumption that the essence of Enlightenment was its assault on clerical bigotry, Trevor-Roper sought the roots of the Scottish Enlightenment in Jacobitism, the counter-cultural alternative to post-1690 Scotland's Calvinist Kirk establishment. Though easily misconstrued as a dogmatic conservative, Trevor-Roper flirted with Marxisant sociology, not least in his account of the social underpinnings of the Scottish Enlightenment. Trevor-Roper argued that it was the rapidity of eighteenth-century Scotland's social and economic transformation which had produced in one generation a remarkable body of political economy conceptualising social change, and in the next a romantic movement whose powers of nostalgic enchantment were felt across the breadth of Europe.


2000 ◽  
Vol 151 (12) ◽  
pp. 502-507
Author(s):  
Christian Küchli

Are there any common patterns in the transition processes from traditional and more or less sustainable forest management to exploitative use, which can regularly be observed both in central Europe and in the countries of the South (e.g. India or Indonesia)? Attempts were made with a time-space-model to typify those force fields, in which traditional sustainable forest management is undermined and is then transformed into a modern type of sustainable forest management. Although it is unlikely that the history of the North will become the future of the South, the glimpse into the northern past offers a useful starting point for the understanding of the current situation in the South, which in turn could stimulate the debate on development. For instance, the patterns which stand behind the conflicts on forest use in the Himalayas are very similar to the conflicts in the Alps. In the same way, the impact of socio-economic changes on the environment – key word ‹globalisation› – is often much the same. To recognize comparable patterns can be very valuable because it can act as a stimulant for the search of political, legal and technical solutions adapted to a specific situation. For the global community the realization of the way political-economic alliances work at the head of the ‹globalisationwave›can only signify to carry on trying to find a common language and understanding at the negotiation tables. On the lee side of the destructive breaker it is necessary to conserve and care for what survived. As it was the case in Switzerland these forest islands could once become the germination points for the genesis of a cultural landscape, where close-to-nature managed forests will constitute an essential element.


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