scholarly journals Funeral for a Homeless Vagrant? Religious and Social Margins

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Lucy Bregman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Homeless Persons ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Protestant Clergy ◽  
In Christ ◽  
Day Services ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Christian Message ◽  
Or History

A “homeless vagrant” was the term used by Protestant clergy of the first half of the twentieth century for a man without name, family or history who died on the street. Clergy were asked to perform a funeral for him, but as his religious status was unknown, his funeral posed a problem for them. How could one preach a hopeful Christian message, for one who may not have had faith in Christ? This paper uses pastors’ manuals and sermon collections to understand how this kind of “problem funeral” was interpreted as an example of a marginal death both religiously and socially. Although there were no mourners, the purpose of the funeral was worship of God, who was always ready to receive us. The homeless vagrant’s funeral was also an occasion for reproach, against the anonymity, impersonality and moral danger of urban life. The homeless vagrant’s extreme isolation and abandonment made him a warning to all. The paper closes with the contrast between this view of death on the street, and that conveyed in recent Homeless Persons Memorial Day services, organized by activists for the homeless. The latter see the homeless as persons with names and stories, part of a counter-community in cities. The tone of reproach is much more prominent here, too. Society has failed these people.

Saving the Nation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Social Christianity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Urban Elite ◽  
Justice And Mercy

This book is a history of the Chinese Protestant elite and their contribution to building a new China in the years from 1922 to 1952. While a small percentage of China’s overall population, China’s Protestants constituted a large and influential segment of the urban elite. They exercised that influence through their churches, hospitals, and schools, especially the universities, and also through institutions such as the YMCA and the YWCA, whose membership was drawn from the modern sectors of urban life. These Protestant elites believed that they could best contribute to the building of a new China through their message of social Christianity, believing that Christianity could help make Chinese society strong, modern, and prosperous, but also characterized by justice and mercy. More than preaching a message, the Protestant elite also played a critical social role, through their institutions, broadening the appeal and impact of social movements, and imparting to them a greater sense of legitimacy. This history begins with the elite’s participation in social reform campaigns in the early twentieth century, continues with their efforts in resisting imperialism, and ends with their support for the Communist-led social revolution.

Racializing Mercy: Capital Punishment and Race in Twentieth-Century England and Wales

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 883-910
Author(s):  
Lizzie Seal ◽  
Alexa Neale
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Capital Punishment ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Institutional Racism ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Men Of Color ◽  
Unequal Access ◽  
To Receive

Fifty-seven men of color were sentenced to death by the courts of England and Wales in the twentieth century and were less likely to receive mercy than white contemporaries. Though shocking, the data is perhaps unsurprising considering institutional racism and unequal access to justice widely highlighted by criminologists since the 1970s. We find discourses of racial difference were frequently mobilized tactically in nineteenth- and twentieth-century England and Wales: to support arguments for mercy and attempt to save prisoners from the gallows. Scholars have identified historically and culturally contingent narratives traditionally deployed to speak to notions of lesser culpability. These mercy narratives reveal contemporary ideals and attitudes to gender or class. This article is original in identifying strategic mercy narratives told in twentieth-century England and Wales that called on contemporary tropes about defendants' race. The narratives and cases we explore suggest contemporary racism in the criminal justice system of England and Wales has a longer history than previously acknowledged.

Detecting Disorder

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lila Caimari
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Buenos Aires ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
The City

Keeping order in the city is the oldest of police duties. In the 1820s, the Policía de Buenos Aires adopted the image of a watchful eye as their emblem, placing the symbol on their medallions, badges, and letterhead. This institution “never slept.” Watching the city by day, watching it by night, the police attempted to give the appearance of being the ubiquitous eyes of authority. This chapter focuses on the crisis and subsequent resurrection of this ideal during the first decades of the twentieth century. It traces this history into the 1930s, when the police began using the new technologies—radios and patrol cars—that fundamentally altered methods of perceiving and collecting information on urban life.

Living with Commercial Sex

2021 ◽  
pp. 149-180
Author(s):  
Siobhán Hearne
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Commercial Sex ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Residency Restrictions ◽  
Imperial State

This chapter focuses on the experience of living in towns and cities in the late imperial period, when prostitution was a visible component of urban life. It examines the different unsuccessful policies employed by the imperial state to enforce the spatial segregation of registered prostitutes and attempts to render brothels invisible on the urban landscape. Official efforts to push lower-class sexuality to the spatial margins are also addressed, particularly policies of zoning and brothel ranking. Some landlords frequently complained to the police about the negative impact of nearby brothels on their rental prices, whereas others helped women who sold sex to resist some of the residency restrictions placed upon them by the police. Ultimately, officialdom’s attempts to limit the visibility of prostitution were spectacularly unsuccessful, as commercial sex was visible everywhere across the Empire’s towns and cities at the turn of the twentieth century.

scholarly journals Enumerating the Hidden Homeless: Strategies to Estimate the Homeless Gone Missing From a Point-in-Time Count

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Agans ◽  
Malcolm T. Jefferson ◽  
James M. Bowling ◽  
Donglin Zeng ◽  
Jenny Yang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
General Population ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Telephone Survey ◽  
Homeless Persons ◽  
Homeless Adults ◽  
Total Multiplicity ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Night Period

Abstract To receive federal homeless funds, communities are required to produce statistically reliable, unduplicated counts or estimates of homeless persons in sheltered and unsheltered locations during a one-night period (within the last ten days of January) called a point-in-time (PIT) count. In Los Angeles, a general population telephone survey was implemented to estimate the number of unsheltered homeless adults who are hidden from view during the PIT count. Two estimation approaches were investigated: i) the number of homeless persons identified as living on private property, which employed a conventional household weight for the estimated total (Horvitz-Thompson approach); and ii) the number of homeless persons identified as living on a neighbor’s property, which employed an additional adjustment derived from the size of the neighborhood network to estimate the total (multiplicity-based approach). This article compares the results of these two methods and discusses the implications therein.

VI. British Intervention in the Persian Revolution, 1905–1909

1972 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 731-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira Klein
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Full Understanding ◽  
British Trade ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
British Policy ◽  
Secure Environment ◽  
To Receive

The activity of the foreign Powers in Persia during the early twentieth century has begun to receive historians’ attention; the British role in the Persian struggle against Kajar despotism, however, has not been made clear. The British have been pictured as indecisive and as not significantly supporting the Persian revolution. Or, where they have been described as aiding rebellion, only vague implications exist as to their purpose: hints that before the Anglo-Russian Convention the British encouraged the revolutionaries in order to extend British influence, presumably at Russian expense, and that after the Convention the British tried to make the shah honour his promises to the constitutionalists to obtain political stability and a secure environment for British trade. At least partly correct, if limited in scope and inexplicit about details, these ideas do not allow a full understanding of British policy during the tumultuous Persian struggle for a constitution. A thorough examination of the exact impact of the Anglo-Russian Convention on Russians and revolutionaries in Persia is required for comprehension of British attitudes and policies.

Can One Person Belong to Two Faiths? The Experience of Three Catholic Monks

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-123
Author(s):  
Enrico Beltramini
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
South India ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Catholic Priests ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Roman Catholic Priests ◽  
To Receive

In the last decade, the question of multireligious identity has begun to receive academic attention. In particular, scholars are beginning to explore examples of people who have experienced two religious traditions equally seriously – that is, the experience of ‘double religious belonging’. This paper reframes, in the light of the notion of double belonging, the lives and experiences of three Roman Catholic priests and monks who moved from Europe to India in the twentieth century and are regarded as ‘founders’ of the Saccidananda Ashram in South India, while providing insights on how we understand double religious identity and the process of religious identity formation.

Bury St. Edmunds and the Populations of Late Medieval English Towns, 1270-1530

1980 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Gottfried
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
General Model ◽  
Rural Economy ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Empirical Methods ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Economic Stagnation

One of the most intriguing and important eras of British demographic history is the later middle ages, crudely defined herein to encompass the years 1270 to 1530. This period includes medieval population at its apex, followed by what many observers have called a Malthusian subsistence crisis, an era of famine and plague pandemic, and finally, a slow, almost phased, period of recovery. Much of the groundwork of urban demographic studies was laid in the nineteenth century, by scholars such as William Denton and the Greens. They believed that most aspects of urban life declined in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and that demographic contraction went hand in hand with social and economic ruin. Despite some questioning and modification of these premises, the concept of decline passed into the twentieth century, and was synthesized by M.M. Postan, the leading economic historian of his time. Using empirical methods, Postan built a general model of late medieval economic stagnation and decay. Towns were more or less peripheral to the gist of his argument, which stressed the overwhelming importance of the rural economy, but he did comment on urban life.

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