Politics and Economics

Despite the fact that Edwards never authored an extended or thorough commentary on political and economic matters, we can detect his assumptions and the general shape of his political and economic commentary scattered throughout his moral treatises, biblical commentary, miscellaneous observations, and sermons. A devoted subject of the Hanoverian monarchy, he presumed that Britain’s empire was the most laudable political system in the Atlantic world. Among other virtues, it served as a hedge against French Catholicism. He interpreted the meaning of that empire through Whig political agendas, which included a robust endorsement of Britain’s transatlantic commercial empire. Yet Edwards’s theological agendas often devalued political and commercial loyalties into contingent goods, subject to critique. He held that theological virtues had the power to minimize national identities in favour of worldwide Christian communion and universal benevolence.

Republican Socialism and Gendered Portrayals of Catholic Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century France

The popularity of Ultramontanism and the political energy provided by Sacred Heart piety gave French Catholicism of the post-Commune era a militant posture, one that republican socialists saw as antagonistic to their political objectives. This article shows that socialists responded by emasculating their Catholic opponents. Drawing on the materialist tradition that emerged from the Enlightenment and Revolution, and highlighting the resignation and emotive nature of radical Catholic piety, republican socialists maintained that religious belief was evidence of inadequate virility. Speaking to the anxieties of the period, which included concerns about racial degeneration and the adequacy of France on the world stage, this gendering of epistemological convictions allowed socialists to argue for the exclusion of religion and the religious male from French politics.

Muslims, Catholics, and the Secular State

Any attempt to explore the relationship between representations of Muslims and public advocacy in modern Western societies must at some point situate both processes in relation to the broader crises of liberal citizenship currently afflicting Western democracies. Calls heard in the 1990s for multicultural citizenship and pluralist “recognition” have long since given way to demands for the exclusion of new immigrants and the coercive assimilation of those – especially Muslims -- long since arrived. This essay examines French Catholic and Muslim perspectives on secularism and citizenship in contemporary France. It highlights disagreements among progressive secularists as well as mainline Catholics and Muslims over how to engage the secular state as well as one’s fellow citizens. It explores the ways in which Catholic advocacy for and with Muslim citizens has been challenged by conservative trends in French Catholicism, as well as the perceived rise of Salafism and, most important, growing support for far-right and Islamophobic movements. The example shows that real-and-existing public spheres look less like the genteelly deliberative public spaces Jurgen Habermas described a generation ago. They are landscapes reshaped by movements, social media, and political entrepreneurs making use of reductionist arguments and media caricature (“fake news”) as much as or even more than deliberative reasoning. These realities present serious challenges to those who hope to use education and dialogue in public advocacy with and for Muslim citizens.

Muslims, Catholics, and the Secular State

Any attempt to explore the relationship between representations of Muslims and public advocacy in modern Western societies must at some point situate both processes in relation to the broader crises of liberal citizenship currently afflicting Western democracies. Calls heard in the 1990s for multicultural citizenship and pluralist “recognition” have long since given way to demands for the exclusion of new immigrants and the coercive assimilation of those – especially Muslims -- long since arrived. This essay examines French Catholic and Muslim perspectives on secularism and citizenship in contemporary France. It highlights disagreements among progressive secularists as well as mainline Catholics and Muslims over how to engage the secular state as well as one’s fellow citizens. It explores the ways in which Catholic advocacy for and with Muslim citizens has been challenged by conservative trends in French Catholicism, as well as the perceived rise of Salafism and, most important, growing support for far-right and Islamophobic movements. The example shows that real-and-existing public spheres look less like the genteelly deliberative public spaces Jurgen Habermas described a generation ago. They are landscapes reshaped by movements, social media, and political entrepreneurs making use of reductionist arguments and media caricature (“fake news”) as much as or even more than deliberative reasoning. These realities present serious challenges to those who hope to use education and dialogue in public advocacy with and for Muslim citizens.