Reformed Theology in Modern Europe (Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries)

Author(s):  
James Eglinton

The history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe is one of upheaval. How did modern European Reformed theologians and theologies fare as the social, political, cultural, and intellectual ground upon which they stood was shifting? This chapter explores developments in Reformed theology in Scotland, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, France, and Hungary. It argues that the nineteenth century saw Reformed theology coming to terms with the Enlightenment—conforming to it, in the case of classical liberal theology, and challenging it, in the case of the Réveil. In the twentieth century, the two most historically important attempts to reimagine the Reformed faith in a culturally modern Europe were neo-Calvinism (Bavinck and Kuyper) and neo-Orthodoxy (Barth). The story of twentieth-century European Reformed theology, for the most part, was the story of Reformed theologians reorienting themselves in relation to Basel and Amsterdam, as the ground moved beneath their feet.

Author(s):  
Frances Klopper

The 4000-year quest for GodSouth Africans live in a time of growing unease amongst Afrikaansspeaking Christians about the traditional God-image of their childhood. As a con-sequence, churches are losing members – which is of concern to the church’s leaders. By referring to Karen Armstrong’s book, A History of God (1999), this article shows that rethinking the idea of God is not new and that healthy iconoclasm is part and parcel of religions as evolving and changing organisms. Over the past 4000 years, each generation created an image of God that worked for them. The article reflects on the God of Judaism, the Christian God, the God of Islam, the God of the philosophers, the mystics, the reformers and the thinkers of the Enlightenment to the eventual eclipse of God in twentieth-century Europe. The purpose of the exercise is to encourage Christians to engage with the process and create a sense of God for themselves by taking heed of the negative and positive moments in God’s long history.


2008 ◽  
pp. 314-339
Author(s):  
Viktor Ye. Yelenskyy

How will religion develop in the 21st century? How optimistic can her outlook be on her future? What will be the meaning of global religious change in the coming decades? Despite being very advanced in the West, the answers to these questions remain problematic. In the famous work, "Returning the Sacred: Arguments for the Future of Religion," D. Bell noted that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, most thinkers expected that religion would disappear in the twentieth century. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many sociologists believed that sociologists believed that "At least since the Enlightenment, most Western intellectuals have expected the death of religion as fervently as the ancient Jews of the coming of the Messiah," reminds American religious scholars R. Stark and R. Bindbridge. and the social sciences were particularly distinguished in the prediction of the inevitable triumph of rationality over “prejudice.” The most celebrated figures in sociology, anthropology, and psychology unanimously expressed the belief that their children, or indeed grandchildren, would witness a new era in which, from Freud, the infantile illusions of religion humanity will outgrow ”


Author(s):  
Barend van der Walt

Abstract Tracing philosophical education at Potchefstroom a century ago It is to be regretted that the history of education in Philosophy at other universities, like the Free University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands (established in 1880) has been documented in several publications, while very little is known about who taught and what was taught in Philosophy during the early days of the later to be known Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (established already in 1869). The introduction indicates that also about the teaching of this subject in general in South Africa not much has been documented. Nevertheless, from the start philosophy was regarded as an important part of the academic curriculum for the training of future ministers (and later also teachers) of the Reformed Churches in South Africa. From about the second decade of the twentieth century two types of Christian Philosophy emerged more clearly. Prof Ferdinand Postma (1879-1950) taught in the line of the logos philosophy of his Dutch mentor, Jan Woltjer (1849-1917), but no traces of this tradition were left after Postma. Prof Sietse Los (1871-1944) followed the Herman Bavinck line, the influence of which was still discernible in the philosophy of H.G. Stoker (1899-1993). This investigation focuses on the philosophical tradition represented by Los a century ago. This overview consists of the following four main parts. Firstly, it investigates the historical background of Reformed theology, especially as it was represented by A. Kuyper and H. Bavinck, the mentors of Los. This is, secondly, followed by some biographical notes on Los. The third, or main section, is devoted to an analysis of Los’s philosophical anthropology from seven of his books published in South Africa and the Netherlands between 1904 and 1944. His view of being human boils down to a Christian-biblicist reinterpretation of preceding Aristotelinising and Platonising ideas about the human being. He supported Aristotle’s and his subsequent followers’ views as embedded in the Christian tradition in their dichotomist view of soul and body as two separate substances. But he combined their anthropology with Plato’s and his Christian followers’ view that the human soul itself should be divided into three functions (a trichotomy) of intellect, will and emotion. The fourth section concludes with an evaluation of some weak as well as positive points in Los’s contribution to philosophical education at Potchefstroom during the early days of the previous century. Key words: Los, S. (1875-1944); Philosophy; Potchefstroom; Postma, F. (1879-1950); twentieth century (beginning) Sleutelwoorde: Filosofie; Los, S. (1875-1944); Potchefstroom; Postma, F. (1879-1950; twintigste eeu (begin)


Author(s):  
Vincenzo Ferrone

This chapter examines the historical problem of how to gain an understanding of the fundamental traits that were original to the Enlightenment. More specifically, it considers how the Enlightenment arose over the intellectual, political, and social life of eighteenth-century élites, so as to produce a cultural revolution that transformed European society. Franco Venturi interpreted the Enlightenment as the “history of a movement,” a movement of a political nature that was created by self-conscious intellectual minorities. The chapter considers Venturi's proposal to go back to a view of the Enlightenment as a movement and as a fundamental chapter in the new history of intellectuals. In particular, it discusses Venturi's project for a political history of the Enlightenment, his denunciation of scholars engaged in the social history of the Enlightenment, and the emergence of a new cultural history in the 1980s.


2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 1125-1139 ◽  
Author(s):  
EGBERT KLAUTKE

ABSTRACTSince the beginning of the twentieth century, European observers and commentators have frequently employed the term ‘Americanization’ to make sense of the astonishing rise of the USA to the status of a world power. More specifically, they used this term to describe the social changes brought about by industrialization and urbanization. In this context, European intellectuals have often used ‘America’ as shorthand for ‘modernity’; across the Atlantic, they believed, it was possible to learn and see the future of their own societies. Criticism of ‘the Americanization of Europe’ – or the world – easily led to outright anti-Americanism, i.e. a radical and reductionist ideology which held the USA responsible for the economic, political, or cultural ills of modern societies. The war in Iraq in 2003 and the alienation between the USA and France and Germany that followed provided a new impetus for studying the history of European perceptions of America. A large number of studies have since been published that deal with the history of the ‘Americanization of Europe’ and anti-Americanism, and several monographs, which are based on original research and promise new insights, will be the focus of this historiographical review.


Author(s):  
Roman Fedorov

The article is devoted to the problem of the social state as one of the fundamental constitutional principles of the state structure of modern developed countries. The course of historical development of philosophical and legal thought on this problem is considered. The idea of a close connection between the concept of the social state and the ideas of utopian socialism of Thomas More and Henri Saint-Simon is put forward. Liberals also made a significant contribution to the development of the idea of the social state, they argued that the ratio of equality and freedom is a key problem for the classical liberal doctrine. It is concluded that the emergence of the theory of the social state for objective reasons was inevitable, since it is due to the historical development of society.


Author(s):  
Marek Korczynski

This chapter examines music in the British workplace. It considers whether it is appropriate to see the history of music in the workplace as involving a journey from the organic singing voice (both literal and metaphorical) of workers to broadcast music appropriated by the powerful to become a technique of social control. The chapter charts four key stages in the social history of music in British workplaces. First, it highlights the existence of widespread cultures of singing at work prior to industrialization, and outlines the important meanings these cultures had for workers. Next, it outlines the silencing of the singing voice within the workplace further to industrialization—either from direct employer bans on singing, or from the roar of the industrial noise. The third key stage involves the carefully controlled employer- and state-led reintroduction of music in the workplace in the mid-twentieth century—through the centralized relaying of specific forms of music via broadcast systems in workplaces. The chapter ends with an examination of contemporary musicking in relation to (often worker-led) radio music played in workplaces.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002200942094003
Author(s):  
Peter Burke

George L. Mosse took a ‘cultural turn’ in the latter part of his career, but still early enough to make a pioneering contribution to the study of political culture and in particular what he called political ‘liturgy’, including marches, processions, and practices of commemoration. He adapted to the study of nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the approach to the history of ritual developed by historians of medieval and early modern Europe, among them his friend Ernst Kantorowicz. More recently, the concept of ritual, whether religious or secular, has been criticized by some cultural historians on the grounds that it implies a fixed ‘script’ in situations that were actually marked by fluidity and improvisation. In this respect cultural historians have been part of a wider trend that includes sociologists and anthropologists as well as theatre scholars and has been institutionalized as Performance Studies. Some recent studies of contemporary nationalism in Tanzania, Venezuela and elsewhere have adopted this perspective, emphasizing that the same performance may have different meanings for different sections of the audience. It is only to be regretted that Mosse did not live long enough to respond to these studies and that their authors seem unaware of his work.


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