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This book examines the contribution of different Christian traditions to the waves of democratisation that have swept various parts of the world in recent decades, offering an historical overview of Christianity's engagement with the development of democracy, before focusing in detail on the period since the 1970s. Successive chapters deal with: the Roman Catholic conversion to democracy and the contribution of that church to democratisation; the Eastern Orthodox ‘hesitation’ about democracy; the alleged threat to American democracy posed by the politicisation of conservative Protestantism; and the likely impact on democratic development of the global expansion of Pentecostalism. The author draws out several common themes from the analysis of these case studies, the most important of which is the ‘liberal-democracy paradox’. This ensures that there will always be tensions between faiths which proclaim some notion of absolute truth and political order, and which are also rooted in the ideas of compromise, negotiation and bargaining.
Catholics, where they do attend church, Boal et al. suggest, they are slightly more conservative than the older generations.14 Conservative Protestants are an interesting religious group in Northern Ireland. These are Protestants who believe in the authority of the Bible, and that people must be ‘saved’ and enter into a new relationship with Jesus Christ.15 The conservative Protestant grouping consists of overlapping subgroups of fundamentalist, evangelical and born-again Christians.16 It is a growing global religion, strong in the United States, Southern and Central
Calvinists. Hatton’s support for them, then, has several potential explanations. The first is that Hatton was genuinely a conservative Protestant, although as we have seen, this makes his favour towards Catholics rather puzzling; Whitgift might have (for example) manoeuvred to turn an anti-Catholic bill into an anti-Puritan one in the 1593 Parliament, but he did not personally patronise significant numbers
, whilst convicting Scopes for teaching evolution, made a laughing stock of conservative Christians in the media and elite circles), conservative Protestants in America had tended to eschew politics, preferring to concentrate on the pursuit of salvation, evangelism, and the creation of community boundaries that would protect their own life worlds. Individuals had been involved in anti-communist campaigns and attempts to combat assorted social ills, but by and large evangelicals and Pentecostals saw the realm of ‘the world’ as of secondary interest. All this began to
This book explores for the first time women’s leading roles in animal protection in nineteenth-century Britain. Victorian women founded pioneering bodies such as the Battersea Dogs’ Home, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, and the first anti-vivisection society. They intervened directly to stop abuses, promoted animal welfare, and schooled the young in humane values via the Band of Mercy movement. They also published literature that, through strongly argued polemic or through imaginative storytelling, notably in Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, showed man’s unjustifiable cruelty to animals. In all these enterprises, they encountered opponents who sought to discredit and thwart their efforts by invoking age-old notions of female ‘sentimentality’ or ‘hysteria’, which supposedly needed to be checked by ‘masculine’ pragmatism, rationality and broadmindedness, especially where men’s field sports were concerned. To counter any public perception of extremism, conservative bodies such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for long excluded women from executive roles, despite their crucial importance as donors and grassroots activists. However, women’s growing opportunities for public work in philanthropic projects and the development of militant feminism, running in parallel with campaigns for the vote, gave them greater boldness in expressing their distinctive view of animal–human relations, in defiance of patriarchy. In analysing all these historic factors, the book unites feminist perspectives, especially constructions of gender, with the fast-developing field of animal–human history.
conservative agendas and in practice supporting authoritarian regimes in much of the developing world. In effect they embodied Marx’s description of religion as the ‘opium of the people’, encouraging passivity and other-worldliness in the face of oppression and injustice. With regard to the influence of American conservative Protestantism, clearly there were attempts by groups within the Christian Right to promote their message in Central America, and several North American televangelists have enjoyed considerable access to the airwaves in parts of the developing world. On
result in an Irish parliament sitting in Dublin again.84 Protestants The leaders of the 1798 uprising had aspired to remove religion from Irish politics but, in the following decades, the demand for independence 3313 Repeal and Revolution.qxd:Between Growth&Security.qxd ‘Ourselves alone’ 21/4/09 10:06 Page 33 33 appeared to be moving closer to Catholicism. The winning of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 alarmed many conservative Protestants, especially as it was followed by the demand for Repeal. Although O’Connell claimed that he wanted the abolition of all
may be unclear, but appear to have been sympathetic to some form of Catholicism or conservative Protestantism; and ‘conformist’ to indicate those of whatever religion who adhered to the laws around religious practice. This book does not claim to be a conventional biography of Hatton; the sources scarcely allow that. It is primarily a study of Hatton’s political career, and in particular of what seems to
Daniel O’Connell joined the Zoological Society but not the Dublin Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Isaac Butt, a conservative Protestant who would become an advocate of Home Rule for Ireland, delivered a lecture to the Zoological Society in 1847. He suggested that the gardens were a more potent symbol of the advance of civilisation than ‘the mightiest building of which imperial Rome could boast’. 58 For Butt, the gardens demonstrated the superiority of Christian civilisation: looking at animals made ‘harmless and unharmed’ reminded the visitor that
of war and the ministry of the navy, giving it a noble, conservative, protestant, military and male character. Of the twenty-eight members, twelve were military men, including four military doctors and one future minister of war. 4 This militarised character of the original board determined the actions and ideas of the NRK at least up until the Second World War. For example, around the turn of the twentieth century, ‘peace work’ was accepted because without it the NRK would face an uncertain future owing to the lack of conflict. Without peacetime work, it was