Protestantism And Repression

Over the last twenty years, incredible changes have taken place in the Presbyterian Church of Brazil. In 1959, on the occasion of its centennial celebrations, this church was acclaimed as the outstanding success story of Protestantism in Latin America; it was hailed for its vitality and for the role it seemed destined to play in the life of that nation. Today, after fifteen years of domination by a small group of reactionary leaders, it has been decimated. The word 'Presbyterian' now calls to mind the destructiveness of religious fanaticism and repression. In 'Protestantism and Repression' Rubem Alves wrestles with the questions, Why did all this happen? What is there in the structure and logic of what he calls 'Right-Doctrine Protestantism, ' that leads to repression under certain historical conditions? His analysis is thorough; his insights, profound; his conclusions, astonishing. I urge you to read this book: whether you fear that our religious institutions are moving toward repression, or are convinced that it can't happen here. --Richard Shaull, from the Foreword An outstanding and internationally recognized Third World theologian, Rubem Alves has in 'Protestantism and Repression' moved from the devastating analysis of the consumer society articulated in 'A Theology of Human Hope' and 'Tomorrow's Child' to a partly autobiographical critique of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil, a church in which his roots are deeply imbedded. Alves rigorously documents the transformation of Presbyterianism in Brazil from a liberating force to a bulwark of oppression and repression; and he convincingly establishes as the cause of this deterioration what he calls 'the spirit of the Right-Doctrine Protestantism, ' a socially conditioned neofundamentalism that arrogates to itself absolute knowledge and absolute power. As Richard Shaull stresses in an excellent and most informative Foreword, what has happened in Brazil could happen to North American Protestantism. But the lesson is not only for Protestants. The basic issues as defined by Alves are equally pertinent for Roman Catholics both in Latin America and in the Unites States. --Gary MacEoin Rubem Alves was educated at the Campinas Presbyterian Seminary in Brazil, Union Theological Seminary, New York, and Princeton Theological Seminary. A Presbyterian minister and professor at the University of Campinas in Brazil, Alves is the author of What is Religion?

Religious repression--the non-violent suppression of civil and political rights--is a growing and global phenomenon. Though most often practiced in authoritarian countries, levels of religious repression nevertheless vary across a range of non-democratic regimes, including illiberal democracies and competitive authoritarian states. In The Varieties of Religious Repression, Ani Sarkissian argues that seemingly benign regulations and restrictions on religion are tools that non-democratic leaders use to repress independent civic activity, effectively maintaining their hold on power. Sarkissian examines the interaction of political competition and the structure of religious divisions in society, presenting a theory of why religious repression varies across non-democratic regimes. She also offers a new way of understanding the commonalties and differences of non-democratic regimes by focusing on the targets of religious repression. Drawing on quantitative data from more than one hundred authoritarian states, as well as case studies of sixteen countries from around the world, Sarkissian explores the varieties of repression that states impose on religious expression, association, and political activities, describing the obstacles these actions present for democratization, pluralism, and the development of an independent civil society.

This fascinating work is the first overview of its subject to be published in over half a century. The issues it deals with are key to early modern political, religious and cultural history. The seventeenth century is traditionally regarded as a period of expanding and extended liberalism, when superstition and received truth were overthrown. The book questions how far England moved towards becoming a liberal society at that time and whether or not the end of the century crowned a period of progress, or if one set of intolerant orthodoxies had simply been replaced by another. The book examines what toleration means now and meant then, explaining why some early modern thinkers supported persecution and how a growing number came to advocate toleration. Introduced with a survey of concepts and theory, the book then studies the practice of toleration at the time of Elizabeth I and the Stuarts, the Puritan Revolution and the Restoration. The seventeenth century emerges as a turning point after which, for the first time, a good Christian society also had to be a tolerant one. Persecution and Toleration is a critical addition to the study of early modern Britain and to religious and political history.

In a work that is as much about the present as the past, Brad Gregory identifies the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation and traces the way it shaped the modern condition over the course of the following five centuries. A hyperpluralism of religious and secular beliefs, an absence of any substantive common good, the triumph of capitalism and its driver, consumerism—all these, Gregory argues, were long-term effects of a movement that marked the end of more than a millennium during which Christianity provided a framework for shared intellectual, social, and moral life in the West. Before the Protestant Reformation, Western Christianity was an institutionalized worldview laden with expectations of security for earthly societies and hopes of eternal salvation for individuals. The Reformation’s protagonists sought to advance the realization of this vision, not disrupt it. But a complex web of rejections, retentions, and transformations of medieval Christianity gradually replaced the religious fabric that bound societies together in the West. Today, what we are left with are fragments: intellectual disagreements that splinter into ever finer fractals of specialized discourse; a notion that modern science—as the source of all truth—necessarily undermines religious belief; a pervasive resort to a therapeutic vision of religion; a set of smuggled moral values with which we try to fertilize a sterile liberalism; and the institutionalized assumption that only secular universities can pursue knowledge. The Unintended Reformation asks what propelled the West into this trajectory of pluralism and polarization, and finds answers deep in our medieval Christian past.

This fascinating work is the first overview of its subject to be published in more than half a century. The issues it deals with are key to early modern political, religious and cultural history. Introduced with a survey of concepts and theory, it moves on to examine the practice of toleration at the time of Elizabeth I and the Stuarts, the Puritan Revolution and the Restoration. The seventeenth century emerges as a turning point after which, for the first time, a good Christian society also had to be a tolerant one.

2. Central government policy