Latest news with #Protestantism
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
New book details ‘troubling history' of eugenics in Texas
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Eugenics, or the pseudoscience of human breeding, reached the height of its notoriety in the early 1900s but never truly disappeared, according to a new book that examines the influence that the debunked movement had on Texas. 'The Purifying Knife: The Troubling History of Eugenics in Texas,' written by Michael Phillips and Betsy Friauf, was published this week. It examines the history and influence of eugenics in the state. Co-author and former history professor Dr. Michael Phillips spoke with KXAN about the book on Wednesday. 'We had mixed feelings doing this book, because this comes in a time when there's so much dangerous rejection of science in terms of vaccines, in terms of climate change and other issues,' Phillips said. Phillips, who earned his doctorate in 2002 at the University of Texas at Austin, has focused his work on the history of racism in Texas. His first book 'White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841–2001' published in 2006 and built off his UT Austin thesis. His and Friauf's research began in 2014. 'Although there were a lot of victims on the way to this science becoming marginalized, the scientific method ultimately did work, and mainstream science did reject it,' he said. 'Eugenics was accepted all across the political spectrum from the very conservative to what were called progressives then, who were the forerunners of liberals today, and it was just accepted scientific wisdom.' Before science moved past eugenics, 36 states passed laws enacting some of the movement's ideas. This included forced sterilization of people deemed 'unfit' — at least 60,000 people were victims of these laws. Texas was one of 12 states that didn't pass eugenics laws, Phillips said. 'Cotton growers in Texas and the big landowners were very much in favor of immigration, because they wanted to exploit Mexican workers as underpaid labor in their fields,' he said. 'Eugenicists were very anti-immigration. So [Texas] had a powerful economic interest that was afraid that if eugenics became law, that immigration from Mexico would stop and that would drive up the cost of their labor.' Fundamentalist Protestantism, which had become a force in Texas politics in the 1920s, was also opposed to eugenicist ideas derived from Darwin's theory of evolution. Phillips said that he sees the emerging pro-natalist movement as a home for discredited eugenics ideas — a natalist conference at UT Austin in March featured speakers who self-described as eugenicists, he said. But also leveled criticism at the environmental movement of the 1960s and 70s for allowing eugenicists. 'I think natalism is easier to sell than outright explicit eugenics. I think a lot of times, modern eugenicists describe themselves as pro-family,' Phillips said. 'But in the 1960s and 1970s … there was a real panic about the world becoming overpopulated. And they really pushed for birth control policy, but they always focused on Africa, Asia and Latin America. It was always places where people of color lived that they wanted to control population.' He warned that people should look critically at anyone who claims the existence of biological differences between racial groups or who believe IQ should determine if a person should be allowed to reproduce. 'There's an assumption that somehow, 'smarter,' whatever that means, is better. And I don't think that necessarily bears up in history,' he said. 'People who had ethics, emotional intelligence, a sense of the need for community, may not have scored well on IQ tests, but they function better in and help contribute to a better society.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Wire
30-05-2025
- Politics
- The Wire
The Life and Work of Christopher Hill
Menu हिंदी తెలుగు اردو Home Politics Economy World Security Law Science Society Culture Editor's Pick Opinion Support independent journalism. Donate Now Top Stories The Life and Work of Christopher Hill Rudrangshu Mukherjee 38 minutes ago No other historian mined the printed sources of the 17th century and wrote about all its aspects in the way Hill did. Christopher Hill. Photo: x/@radicaldaily Real journalism holds power accountable Since 2015, The Wire has done just that. But we can continue only with your support. Contribute now Christopher Hill (1912-2003) belonged to Balliol, and the 17th century belonged to Christopher Hill. No other historian mined the printed sources of that century and wrote about all its aspects – politics, economics, society and literature – in the way Hill did. He opened up the field and taught us to look at it afresh. His writing was informed by a staggering erudition and a rare passion. E.P. Thompson, dedicating a book to Hill, captured his loyalty to Balliol and his supreme control over the century that he made his own: 'Master of more than an old Oxford college'. In spite of this pre-eminent position, till Michael Braddick wrote this book, no one has attempted to write a biography of Hill. Many of his contemporaries – E.H. Carr, A.J.P. Taylor, Hugh Trevor-Roper, E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm to name a few – have had biographers. Braddick's book thus fills a major gap. Michael Braddick, Christopher Hill: The Life of a Radical Historian, Verso (2025) In a sense, it comes too late because very few historians and students of history are any longer interested in what Hill wrote and what he stood for. This indifference and neglect notwithstanding, it is good to have Hill's life and work retrieved from the condescension of the present. Christopher was born in York. His father was an affluent solicitor and his parents were Methodists. It was this ambience of dissenting Protestantism, Hill was fond of saying, that predisposed him to lifelong political apostasy. He went to St Peter's School, York, and came to Balliol as a scholar in 1931. It is said that the two History dons at Balliol, Vivian Galbraith and Kenneth Bell, were so impressed by his entrance papers that they not only awarded him 100% but also drove to York to ensure that Hill came to Balliol and did not get lured to Trinity College, Cambridge. Thus began Christopher's 43-year-long association with Balliol, of which he was to become Master in 1965. He took the top first in History in his year and won the distinguished Lothian Prize and the Goldsmith's Senior Studentship. He went on to be elected a Fellow by examination of All Souls. He came back to Balliol in 1938 as fellow and tutor in Modern History. His bonding with Balliol is best illustrated by an anecdote (not mentioned by Braddick). After his retirement, his successor as Master, Anthony Kenny, reintroduced formal Hall (formal dining in the College Hall). On the first occasion when formal Hall was reinstituted, a masked figure appeared beneath the organ loft and shouted, 'Long live the spirit of Christopher Hill.' The incident alludes to the loyalty that Hill commanded and also to his position against some traditional Oxford customs and practices. Hill was Oxford's most famous Marxist who had been a member of the British Communist Party from the mid-Thirties till the Soviet invasion of Hungary. His conversion to communism occurred while he was still an undergraduate. The impact of the Depression and the rise of fascism forced him to question the premises of the society in which he lived. Such queries led, as it did for many others in the Thirties, to Marxism and communism. Braddick dwells at length on Hill's activities and ideas when he was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). I thought that devoting so many pages to Hill's party activism was unnecessary, since such activities, and the beliefs they were based on, would become irrelevant to Hill's work as a historian post 1956. Presumably, Braddick thought that such a detailed account was important to establish Hill's radical credentials. The period when Hill was a party member – roughly mid-1930s to mid-1950s – is the most problematic phase of Hill's professional life. During these years, he remained an unalloyed and unreconstructed Stalinist. He spent time in Soviet Russia in the 1930s, when the terror of Stalinist collectivisation and the purges had begun. He did not take note of these developments. This is like someone visiting Berlin/Germany during the same period and failing to note what was being done to the Jews. Braddick writes of Hill's 'partisan defence of Stalinism'. A few pages before the use of this euphemistic phrase, Braddick notes Hill's paean to Stalin: 'He was a great and penetrating thinker … he was a highly responsible leader.' (Hill's words) As a practising historian, Hill endorsed Stalin the historian. No wonder during these years, he wrote a book on the Russian Revolution which had little or no mention of Trotsky. Hill swallowed the party line to risible and absurd limits. Braddick evades the critical issues involved here by remarking 'It is hard to know what to make of this paean to Stalin.' There is an enormous amount to be made from this. Hill was a victim and product of the greatest radical illusion of the 20th century. He was not alone: many others of equal eminence and erudition had willingly yielded to the predicament of sacrificing their reason to the altar of the party and the Soviet Union. It was a bizarre and self-inflicted blindness. Thompson, a member of the CPGB and Hill's comrade, was to write with more than a hint of regret that he began reasoning only at the age of 33 i.e. after he had left the party in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Hill began reasoning when he was 45, after he resigned from the CPGB. It was only in 1981, in far away New Zealand and to a non-British audience, as Braddick notes, that Hill could confess, 'I was a sucker for Stalinism until I found out a lot more about it. I thought that the Communist Party held out an alternative. I was wrong.' Hill's scholarly output was enormous. He wrote 21 books and innumerable essays. The first book came out in 1940 and the last in 1996. That first book, The English Revolution 1640, despite its many drawbacks and its schematicism, has become a minor classic. Looking back at the book, Hill once said it was written by an angry young man in a hurry because he knew he was going to die. It was written up self-consciously as a last will and testament. It broke from prevailing historiography which saw the events of the 1640s either in constitutional terms or as a religious conflict. Hill tried to show that it was a more comprehensive social and economic transformation, the first significant moment in the birth of English capitalism and the bourgeoisie. From that first book to 1956, Hill did not publish any books on the 17th century. Post 1956 was a remarkably productive phase. It coincided significantly with his marriage to Bridget Sutton and his exit from the communist party. He wrote on a range of subjects concerning the 17th century – on puritanism, on the economic problems of the church, on the intellectual origins of the English Revolution and on the literature and political ideas of the 17th century. Looking back at the corpus of Christopher's writings, it is clear that all his books and articles were connected by a running theme. He wanted to understand the place of the English Revolution in history and to document and analyze the mental and cultural transformations that accompanied and facilitated the rise of capitalism. He looked at Puritanism and its relationship with capitalism and the political upheavals of the 1640s; he drew out the links of Puritanism with an intellectual and political radicalism which challenged the very premises of the new socio-economic formation even as it was being born. This is how he made the 17th century his own. He set the agenda for research on the period. It is difficult to even list, let alone summarise, all that Hill wrote. I will take the liberty of presenting here my own personal favourite and I dare say Hill's too. This is The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (1972), conceived and written in the period of student radicalism and the flowering of counter culture. Here he drew out the revolution within the revolution, ideas and movements that aimed to overthrow what the English Revolution was trying to institute at every level of English life and society. Men and women, seldom written about, came alive in the book as did ideas and movements long relegated to the loony fringe of the 17th century. Hill brought to his archive a historical imagination that lit up a utopian and inevitably passing moment of teeming freedom. This book and, in fact, everything else that Hill wrote, is invariably marked by a sensitive use of literature as a source for history writing. He had the rare ability – most tellingly revealed in his great book, Milton and the English Revolution – of setting his reading of literary texts within a general view of the processes of historical continuity and change. His essays on Marvell, on Clarissa Harlowe, on Vaughan, not to mention his book on Bunyan, are rich in literary and historical understanding. Hill believed that the study of history humanises us. History can never be only the recounting of a success story. He quoted Nietzsche approvingly, 'History keeps alive the memory of great fighters against history.' Hill was only too aware that persons of his ideological persuasion would have to live with 'the experience of defeat' (the title of one of his books). History is a tragedy, Hill wrote, although not a meaningless one. Braddick, as I pointed out, avoids the more problematic aspects of Hill's communist past. Similarly, he doesn't discuss some very critical issues embedded in Hill's formidable academic output. What Hill described as 'The English Revolution'' in 1940 became in his more mature writings the' bourgeois revolution''. But Hill did not quite explain this term and what justified it. Did the bourgeoisie lead the revolution in the 1640s? Did that revolution, if it was one, lead to the formation of a bourgeois society? The only time Hill came to address such questions was in an essay titled 'A Bourgeois Revolution?' – an essay that Braddick does not discuss. (J.G.A. Pocock (ed.) Three British Revolutions, 1641, 1688, 1776, Princeton University Press, 1980). I think the question mark in the title is significant. Hill argued in this essay that the English Revolution 'was brought about neither by the wishes of the bourgeoisie, nor by the leaders of the Long Parliament. But its outcome was the establishment of conditions far more favourable to the development of capitalism than those that prevailed before 1640.' The English-Bourgeois Revolution was the product, Hill argued, of unintended consequences. This is a puzzling argument. What would happen to this argument if the Russian Revolution of 1917 was seen in terms of its outcomes – a violent totalitarian regime intended by Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin to suppress the working class and butcher the common people? It seems to me that Hill had not thought through the implications of his argument. Hence, perhaps the question mark in the title of the essay. There are questions also about Hill's method and reading of sources. Braddick quotes Keith Thomas, who is by no reckoning a denigrator of Hill, 'whatever Christopher Hill reads seems to provide him with additional support for views he already holds'' This is quite damning and very close to what J.H. Hexter in his critique of Hill called 'lumping'. Hill himself once admitted that he had a thesis to argue and he brought together evidence to buttress that thesis. It needs to be asked if this is a valid method and does it live up to what Thompson called the 'historian's discourse of proof'. Moving to his work as Master of Balliol, Braddick's account would suggest that he was a very popular Master. This may not always have been the case. There were Fellows of Balliol who believed that Hill formed cabals, worked on the principle 'if you are not with me, you are against him' and was not always very kind to those who differed with him. In spite of what I have written above, it would be wrong on my part not to note that Hill commanded respect from even people who did not agree with him or liked him. Richard Cobb, who always called Hill quasi mockingly, 'super God', wrote in Hill's support in the Times Literary Supplement during the (in)famous Hill-Hexter spat. In his letter, Cobb invited Hexter to visit Oxford and listen to a sermon delivered on the Sunday of seventh week of Michaelmas Term titled 'On the Sin of Pride'. Tariq Ali recalls Hill telling him that in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Hungary, when Thompson had resigned from the CPGB and Hill still hadn't, the former wrote to Hill a letter which Hill described as 'the rudest and the most obnoxious letter I have ever received in my life'. Braddick does not mention this letter. What was in that letter? Why was Hill delaying his resignation? How did a reconciliation between Hill and Thompson take place? Braddick's biography is good if a trifle adulatory and justificatory. Hill would have wanted us to go a little beyond. 'What canst thou say?' he would have asked us as he indeed did in the unforgettable last line of The World Turned Upside Down. Rudrangshu Mukherjee is chancellor and professor of history at Ashoka University. Views expressed are the author's own. Make a contribution to Independent Journalism Related News Prime Time | The Big Takeaways from the India-Pak Ceasefire In Contrast: Nehru's Take on a Young, Dissenting Irfan Habib and the Modi Govt's Treatment of Mahmudabad Ladakh: Local BJP Unit Joins Protests Against LG B.D. Mishra's 'Administrative Failures' What the Young Bengal Achieved and Why it is Largely Unacknowledged 'Parliament Kept in Dark': How Modi Govt's Multi-Party Global Outreach Differs from The Past Meitei Group Writes to Amit Shah About 'Unconstitutional Blockade' of Path to Pilgrimage Site The Deep Love Affair Between Mangoes and the Mughals President Withholds Assent to Kerala Government's Malayalam Language Bill New NCERT Social Science Textbook Replaces Three Books, References to Mughals Not in Part 1 View in Desktop Mode About Us Contact Us Support Us © Copyright. All Rights Reserved.
NDTV
25-05-2025
- General
- NDTV
US Men Are Flocking To Russian Churches That Promote Traditional Masculinity
Father Moses McPherson, a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, is promoting a rugged, traditional form of masculinity through his YouTube videos. He mocks activities he considers too feminine, such as wearing skinny jeans, crossing one's legs, or eating soup. In contrast, he showcases his physical strength through weightlifting videos set to heavy metal music. The priest, a father of five, has a unique background, having converted from Protestantism and previously worked as a roofer, as per BBC. Notably, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) has been expanding its presence in the US, largely due to conversions from other faiths. Over the past six months, Father Moses has guided 75 new followers to prepare for baptism at his Mother of God Church, located just north of Austin. "When my wife and I converted 20 years ago, we used to call Orthodoxy the best-kept secret, because people just didn't know what it was. But in the past year-and-a-half, our congregation has tripled in size," he said. The Orthodox Christian community in the US is relatively small, making up about 1% of the population. Within this community, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) stands out as a conservative jurisdiction. Founded by clergy who fled the Russian Revolution, ROCOR has gained attention in recent years, particularly following President Donald Trump's shift towards Moscow. Narrating his experience, Theodore, a software engineer, said he felt unfulfilled despite having a dream job and a loving wife. He believes societal expectations have been overly critical of men, particularly those who want to be breadwinners and support stay-at-home wives, labelling such relationships as toxic. Father Moses emphasises two paths to serving God: monastic life or marriage. For married couples, he advocates for a large family and rejects contraception, citing the lack of saintly approval for birth control. He also condemns masturbation as "pathetic and unmanly." Father Moses believes Orthodoxy represents a balanced, normal approach, contrasting it with what he sees as the overly feminised Western Christianity, particularly in some Protestant churches that focus on emotional expression. He criticises the "worship music" in these churches, associating it with excessive emotion, which he believes isn't suited for men.
Spectator
24-05-2025
- General
- Spectator
How to save the Church of England
The Church of England's various travails and dilemmas – on controversial issues, like sexuality and safeguarding – are on one level beside the point. Even if it managed to solve these problems, the Church's drift to the margins of our culture looks likely to continue. The really fundamental issue is how the CofE can reverse that drift, how it can renew itself. This is harder to talk about, as it has little connection with the news cycle. The renewal of the Church depends on the quality of its worship culture, and the traditional forms seem unable to generate new excitement. Its main historic attempts at renewal were rooted in worship culture. The Catholic revival of the mid-nineteenth century, known as the Oxford Movement, involved lots of ritual finery and theatrical pomp. It produced many good things, but the 'high' style could not really unite a Church rooted in Protestantism.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
As the Conclave Continues, Catholicism Is at a Crossroads
Cardinals attends the opening of the Conclave in the sistine Chapel on May 07, 2025 in Vatican City, Vatican. Cardinals of the Catholic Church have descended on Vatican City to commence the papal conclave, the secretive voting process held in the Sistine Chapel that requires a two-thirds majority to elect the new leader of the Catholic Church. The election follows the death of Pope Francis on April 21 at the age of 88. Credit - Vatican Media/Vatican Pool—Corbis/Getty Images As the cardinals gather in Rome to choose the new leader for 1.4 billion Catholics, the Catholic Church once again stands at a crossroads. The animating question facing the conclave is whether the cardinals want the Church to continue in the direction of a broader, more capacious understanding of the faith as articulated by Francis, or will they revert to the conservative, more traditionalist ways of his predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The Church has stood at similar crossroads several times in the modern era. From 1545 to 1560, the Council of Trent met to determine the Church's response to the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar prior to his excommunication in 1520, had pointed out the corruptions of medieval Catholicism and emphasized the doctrine of justification by faith (not works) and what he called the priesthood of believers. The question before the prelates at the Council of Trent was whether to acknowledge the excesses and reform the Church in the direction of the more stripped-down Protestantism that Luther and other Reformers advocated. Trent, however, moved in the opposite direction, becoming 'more Catholic' in its affirmation of the importance of the sacraments and good works. This hyper-Catholicism can be traced most graphicly in the Baroque and Rococo architecture that followed, which John Updike described as 'the incredible visual patisserie of baroque church interiors, mock-marble pillars of paint-veined gesso melting upward into trompe-l'oeil ceilings bubbling with cherubs, everything gilded and tipped and twisted and skewed to titillate the eye, huge wedding-cake interiors meant to stun Hussite peasants back into the bosom of Catholicism.' Another crossroads for modern Catholicism occurred following the death of Pope Pius XII in October 1958. The cardinals opted for what they thought was a 'caretaker' pope, 76-year-old Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who took the name John XXIII. He turned out to be anything but a caretaker. Declaring that it was 'time to throw open the windows of the Church and let the fresh air of the spirit blow through,' he convened the Second Vatican Council, which reformed Church theology and liturgy (including mass in the vernacular) and, its supporters say, brought the Church into the modern world. John XXIII's successor, Pope Paul VI faced another crossroads shortly after the conclusion of Vatican II. John XXIII had formed a study group, the Pontifical Commission on Birth Control, to review the Church's teaching on the matter. The commission, which Paul VI expanded, included laywomen, married couples, theologians and bishops. The overwhelming recommendation was that the Church should revise its teaching to allow artificial means of birth control. Paul VI, however, rejected that recommendation and issued the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae on July 25, 1968. The only acceptable means of birth control, the Church decreed, was the rhythm method, which critics promptly dubbed 'Vatican Roulette.' Humanae Vitae persuaded many Catholics, especially in the United States, that the Pope was hopelessly out of touch. Second-wave feminism, the drive for upward mobility, career opportunities and the desire for smaller families prompted many Catholic households to ignore the papal directive on birth control. As many studies have shown, Catholic attendance declined after 1968; many Catholics felt for the first time that it was all right to disobey the pope and still consider themselves good Catholics. Now, following the death of Pope Francis, the Church once again stands at a crossroads. Conservatives, those Mark Massa, a historian and a Jesuit, calls 'Catholic Fundamentalists,' are pressing for a pope who will reverse course. They criticize Francis for making overtures to the LGBTQ community and for permitting priests to bless same-sex unions. They claim he has 'feminized' the Church by calling out what others describe as 'toxic masculinity.' They dislike the fact that he restricted use of the traditional Latin mass and entertained the possibility of ordaining married men to the priesthood. The other faction of the Church points out that Francis graciously sought to welcome marginal people—gays, lesbians, divorced people—into the Church and evinced concern for immigrants and for the poor, positions that have demonstrable appeal to a younger generation of Catholics. They also appreciate his attention to the ravages of climate change. The term liberal in the context of the Roman Catholic Church may be an oxymoron, but this second camp seeks to perpetuate the work and the legacy of Francis. The conclave stands at a crossroads, and the person the cardinals choose will likely determine the direction of the Church for years to come. As an Episcopal priest, not a Catholic, I have only a rooting interest in the conclave, and I'm loath to make predictions. But I recall the lyrics of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia,' by the Charlie Daniels Band, a fiddler's faceoff between Satan and a young man named Johnny. The devil bets a fiddle of gold against Johnny's soul and leads off with the bow across the strings, making 'an evil hiss.' The rendition may be technically perfect, but it lacks soul. When Johnny takes his turn, the fiddle vibrates with verve and passion—and he prevails. Whoever prevails in the cardinals' deliberations will inherit a church with plenty of gilding but still in need of some of the verve and passion that Francis brought to the task. Contact us at letters@
