Blockchain Papers

Loren King

Forms of informal cooperation, coordination, and action that embody mutuality without hierarchy are the quotidian experience of most people. Only occasionally do they embody implicit or explicit opposition to state law and institutions. Most villages and neighborhoods function precisely because of the informal, transient networks of coordination that do not require formal organization, let alone hierarchy. In other words, the experience of anarchistic mutuality is ubiquitous. Subsidiarity frustrates. Emerging from Catholic roots to become an explicit part of EU law,1 the principle admits of clear articulation as an ideal (‘vest authority as close as feasible to those most affected’) but then invites conflicting interpretations and elaborations. As a workable principle, subsidiarity founders seemingly when we need it most: when we ask what, precisely, that principle regulates. Andreas Føllesdal has shown that distinct interpretations of subsidiarity have strikingly incongruous political implications, with any “apparent consensus … gained only by obfuscation” (Føllesdal 1998, 190). And as a moral precept, subsidiarity promises a politics sensitive to diverse needs and responsive to local knowledge; yet in practice, any implementation of the ideal pulls us back toward an authoritative center to regulate disputes and coordinate all of this local wisdom. Jenna Bednar describes subsidiarity as “the soul of federalism” (Bednar 2014, 231) and she has in mind two complementary rationales: ensuring that political power is close to the people affected, while also finding efficient ways to satisfy diverse preferences. Of particular interest in Bednar's account is the epistemic role for subsidiarity in bringing a wider range of perspectives to bear on judging new policies than might otherwise be the case in a more centralized system. Here, then, the justification of subsidiarity appeals to efficiency and accountability, not simply for any given snapshot of needs, interests, and associated policies, but also (and more critically) to the constitutional and administrative system as a whole.2 Still, these epistemic hopes for subsidiarity seem to assume, as Jacob Levy puts it, “a fantastic level of competence, knowledge, and disinterestedness on the part of the body that allocates decision-making authority in each case—itself usually one of the contenders for the authority at stake” (Levy 2007, 462). I love subsidiarity for these frustrations and ambiguities. In this respect, it is the perfect moral maxim for the real worlds of political institutions and practices, where most of us, most of the time, muddle through the messy day-to-day complexities of living together, while leaving space for dissent and resistance. Levy argues that subsidiarity “fails as an institutional decision rule,” but he prefaces that indictment with the thought that it “may offer a useful critical language” (Levy 2007, 462). That, I think, is a thought worth pursuing. Perhaps we will be less frustrated with subsidiarity if we see it not primarily as a decision rule or principle of institutional design, but also, and perhaps more importantly, as an essential challenge to the dominant vocabulary of the sovereign territorial state? To be sure, subsidiarity labors under the long shadow of the Westphalian imaginary, a vision of politics anchored in justifying coercion over a bounded territory. Sovereignty and rights are the coins of that realm. If subsidiarity is to be a critical lens, then it will be laboring against that imaginary, and our settled moral and legal vocabularies so firmly entrenched therein. To make my case, then, this is the labor I will undertake here. On a rather cold and unfriendly morning in October 1625, Rudolph Christian, the newly enthroned count of Eastern Frisia, arrived at the city gate of Emden, expecting that the city would welcome him and immediately start with the traditional ceremonies during which it had to pay homage to its new sovereign. But nobody met Rudolph Christian at the gate, and only later in the day a delegation of the city council appeared at the count's residence, telling him to his great surprise, that it had not been possible to meet him at the city gate because it had not been known through which of the several gates he had wished to enter (Hueglin 1979, 9). Centuries later and half a world away, Clifford Geertz (1980) offers the following story to set the puzzle of his remarkable account of politics and ceremony in precolonial Bali. Dutch administrators, seeking to establish clear designations of local authority and ownership, wished to establish the boundary between two hostile princedoms. The princes agreed that the boundaries were, respectively, wherever one could see the sea, facing outward, or the marshlands, facing inward. Perplexed, the administrators asked if there hadn't been past conflicts over such a murky division: didn't they fight over this territory? “Mejheer,” one of the old leaders replied, “we have much better reasons to fight than these shabby hills” (Geertz 1980, 24–25). Ultimately, things end poorly for the Balinese order. Geertz recounts one of the final encounters of that regime with Dutch forces in 1908, at “Klungkung, the nominal ‘capital’ of traditional Bali” where “the king and court again paraded, half entranced, half dazed with opium, out of the palace into the reluctant fire of the by now thoroughly bewildered Dutch troops. It was quite literally the death of the old order. It expired as it had lived: absorbed in a pageant” (12–13). What binds these two accounts? In each, older forms—and animating symbols and rituals—of political order fall before the imperatives of sovereignty and its most central ordering feature: coercion. Violence. Max Weber's (in)famous claim to monopoly over legitimate coercion within a clearly delineated territory (Weber 1919, 78). In the case of the Balinese order, Geertz means to highlight what our Westphalian-inflected conceptions of politics and the state tend to obscure: “the ordering force of display, regard, and drama” (Geertz 1980, 121). If we invoke our favored analytic categories and causal explanations to reduce the semiotic core of Balinese politics to “the worn coin of European ideological debate” we “allow most of what is most interesting about it to escape our view. Whatever intelligence it may have to offer us about the nature of politics, it can hardly be that big fish eat little fish, or that the rags of virtue mask the engines of privilege” (123). When the homage was finally paid two years later, on the 28th of June 1627, the relation between city and sovereign had indeed been radically changed. In the place of the unilateral obligation of the city, there now was a mutual contract: in exchange for the city's oath of loyalty, the count had to guarantee the city's privileges by an equally binding ‘declaration of rights’. Especially the oath-formula itself appeared fundamentally altered. Where the old oath had spoken of obedience according to customary law between vassals and hereditary sovereign, the new text only spoke of faith between count and city according to mutual contract and in consideration of the city's privileges (Hueglin 1979, 9-10). At the dawn of the sovereign territorial state, then, and sharing so much by way of law and culture, Althusius could negotiate favorable terms of Emden's submission with the fading relevance of local sovereigns. Two centuries later, no such space was possible for the Balinese, and for countless other peoples with distinctive ways of ordering their public lives together. History is littered with peoples who had better reasons to fight than their shabby hills, or who might sometimes fight over shabby hills that they only saw and settled on every few years, before moving on. These peoples lost out to others, whose understandings of use, possession, property, territory, and place were grounded in a particular notion of a right: powers and entitlements to exclude, ultimately grounded in the violence of the sovereign territorial state. The imperatives of territorial sovereignty are distinct from mere control: Henrik Spruyt (Spruyt 1994, 34–35) notes the fundamental novelty of what happens in the decades and centuries after the encounter Hueglin describes. Human territoriality is a deep fact of social life, to be sure; and claims of exclusive and absolute authority are familiar throughout history. The latter, however, were typically made by priests, emperors, and kings, and those claims were over people (bodies and souls), resources, and activities. Territorial jurisdiction was incidental to these desirada, and indeed unimportant insofar as the final authority of divine edict—and of the king or emperor sanctioned by the mandate of heaven—was universal and undifferentiated. In the medieval West, the idea of sovereignty, while a part of medieval thought and law at least from Bodin's famous reflections,3 took a long time to become politically important because it was not clearly differentiated in space: there were no borders delimiting God's power. Spruyt puts the point succinctly: “Church and empire were universalist forms of organization” (1994, 35). This is not to say that claims of territorial jurisdiction were uncommon in human history, but most often they were not claims of exclusive and final authority over clearly bounded physical regions. More often, jurisdictional claims were limited to particular times, people, and activities. Territorial control was incidental to, and derivative of, authority over peoples, activities, and resources. So, what is possible for Emden and some other cities fades as territorial jurisdiction becomes wed to the idea of sovereign territorial states. Possibilities for understanding and implementing complex and overlapping configurations of negotiated, provisional sovereignties become foreclosed under the emerging logics of capital (commerce, exchange, exploitation) and coercion (violence, control, domination), a historical dynamic beautifully elaborated by Charles Tilly (1993).4 Against that history, we so often find ourselves chafing at the legacy of the sovereign state system. Scholars wrestle with how regionally concentrated—and often historically oppressed or marginalized—groups can be fairly and within and most or when those might it from sovereign territorial Scholars with the of and the by peoples, in the and the world has with and if sovereign territorial may and more coercion at borders And and that state and perhaps most us to the of state sovereignty and the of how institutions in fact to with these complexities the of and legitimate coordination with to and indeed the and of the idea of and These are all indeed and I if we might do to some of those ways of ordering public that have been or under the that sovereignty has over Perhaps the of from such us to an understanding of subsidiarity at its a of against that as much as a rule of for What it to subsidiarity not primarily as a principle and an authoritative as a moral principle and but as a of against the dominant vocabulary of territorial sovereignty, and rights of jurisdiction and is as a and not a to and of the old order. after much to in the world we find ourselves have a and moral vocabulary that we can and and that admits of important and But how we the between peoples, and without some idea of And if we that to be a then we can with for the sovereign territorial state as and those This is also to however, that by the between peoples and as a of who has a to territory, we are these in a a and legal that to the idea of a over or and of and are institutional means to those and within a This is the of much by and who has a to what territory and its who as a distinct When and are these claims and what do those rights by way of resources, within a territory, and borders against to These are important and in a and with and our need for and on these is Still, these and labor firmly within the and vocabularies of the Westphalian sovereign state, and a dominant of that realm. are a and we can as engines for and we can territorial of claims of legitimate and of terms of rights ownership, and These are not the only such however, and we perhaps as the principle of to our and not force and political on other other ways of the between and peoples, territory and To this a might what could our to resources, and people other than one of This after the world we find ourselves have a and moral vocabulary from the past can and that and we offer important and to these in of the and of those past But on ways of understanding these if we were to in that what would be the as political those to and the most of ideal do not we long in the of at do not there and claim the of with we not only to our practices, but also to be in and in a world where where such to and where territorial the only feasible way to those rights through and I claim that she is such a but in on territorial sovereignty, an of the historical to the sovereign territorial these historical to the territorial system not because they real for us for the most they social and that no and they In on to that these historical complexities make clear it may be at the territorial system is not a or an political Still, so other in this of a given that we do in fact in a world of sovereign territorial (and associated is she moral justification for our world as a of jurisdictional we see this of political as a firmly historical are there that might or legitimate I not a I with and that state political authority can indeed be least given some of the by I to the on offer by such as and others, claims of for peoples to be on particular but also that the familiar state system is and in critical and that state claims of sovereign control over peoples and claims to in to moral and of that however, I that of I have more of the I what by the fact and our categories and the of authority so often toward the world in a particular and to that world according to their administrative logics and of and I also not a but in this I those have the can about and of political or that state but at the end of the if of a state and then it is a that its and at or use, this is what their their core their most I by as (and the vocabulary of rights when about the of politics, we may be that moral about coercion what so a that state is the or limited to Westphalian and or it to of or it is and its and according to the imperatives of analytic and of not they useful in understanding how our world and in I the territorial rights ultimately in the Westphalian imaginary, this these and and where it is Still, it is how our of, territorial rights in and in or ultimately to so much in moral vocabulary of and territorial jurisdiction a particular that those entitlements to regulate of and in so other not as a deep point of but as a yet historical fact about our and I not for of a territorial state system by the privileges of state and then by that those need be “the we are familiar with in authoritative of public but she that decision-making by and would count as on this would local that typically on a much than famous local for resources, such as local or to the But the of how those and local would be is the of the of territorial sovereignty are to politics, and I we escape that simply by some or the messy but local and that so in of and and the of occasionally in of a centralized To see the more in these of be to a that for their peoples and would this the the other in our world on terms that they would have historically for In that at the they can be our are in and a or ways that their understandings and would have without the of European to our understanding of and legitimate not us to And this the old that we simply their their conceptions of and to Of we and they But for all of our of and and we to in ways that make those the in through the complexities of use, and territorial on and the that are now I think, the only in these to only to while and this not the that is the The one other in in when the of rights is with of how to and place are I between and two this is more than the any other way of life, have in political and These and foreclosed for and the quotidian of and social life, on the that have to the hopes and of and and yet that sovereign have in and in the ways The of these I and and moral and then perhaps of our and ask if our favored ownership, use, jurisdictional territorial be in ways that are not so to the idea of and more to the legacy of that that that our understandings of and and that so for politics and and resources. can the and of the Westphalian on a bounded sovereign authority over territory, and then with our and their or we can that and its at least to some useful we can do the by and and are and in through who has rights to territory, when and and how we about and and But they are much within the Westphalian a little against the and historical of that we do when we ask about the of ways of within these and we find ourselves and often So, we need and moral within the and political we have but we also at those where the and and need not and It may be that we the ways that other other can us the and of at its can be such a a principle of through in ways that against rule by others, while the that we are often with those I of the to the at of this when they to their with the messy of politics as it is in and and villages and neighborhoods and and overlapping that quotidian against a of subsidiarity for and other within sovereign states. In other has as that sovereign territorial can be yet also then consideration (and to the of how a principle of subsidiarity might an institutional “a of by their to of a world but where subsidiarity more coordination at the level is with more local argues for a of control over when that control is to in but those can be by the more fundamental of When claims on and of which subsidiarity is an In a that and the justification of borders against the of than and and the notion that political order and peoples who claim sovereignty over a particular to through sovereignty on a on complex and of deep people, such as and which she terms In through how these of and but also and in of territorial rights and state sovereignty, appeals to an account of I the of account of territorial and on point us to about and in terms that the vocabulary of the sovereign territorial state. The of of what and where and as by and and typically the of of resources. of this is perhaps the story to of complex that few have the and on the by and the Emerging from a between two sovereign the has into a but of and that and that state, and policies to that at least people one and of two sovereign If there is one that what the day-to-day and formal the and and the to of would have to be decision is made that not make to those the of and most importantly, of is to local and and and The in some ways a point about of subsidiarity that are typically as a that any workable implementation of subsidiarity under of social and will require coordination and at of organization, and that the (and on such will be To the that any principle of subsidiarity of to that mandate will require a coordination of diverse of which require that are by as and which authority back toward a one of subsidiarity in the European at of that while subsidiarity has been by as a challenge to more with to it has to be an which some political not least the have to more and 2014, with that might be thought to that in of is not and that “the on are not however, on to that perhaps is better as a for with less on the in of On my favored of subsidiarity as a for critical these simply are not of subsidiarity as a moral and critical do a close between subsidiarity and of the between the epistemic and of subsidiarity within And I this to territorial anchored in what she a of most clearly by of the through with the of and authority in I do however, we need to these in of and overlapping jurisdictional and rights within a sovereign territorial state? If the is that politics is about and our then perhaps subsidiarity can be the core moral rather than sovereignty and rights of jurisdiction and perhaps more as the critical been subsidiarity is a that sovereignty, and control rights from and of the and in which so much of our most What of the at the by Andreas Føllesdal and several others, that interpretations of subsidiarity authoritative of the principle to to be a not with subsidiarity and not with subsidiarity as a critical lens, but with constitutional that the of their frustrations of by of human and the of politics as the of particular sovereign territorial states. to consensus on interpretations of political we claim to In such an however, constitutional and may not be a but a subsidiarity is as much about through in as it is a to challenge sovereign imperatives and their dominant In a world that has the of Westphalian territorial sovereignty, the imperatives of and which to toward the of with a critical have a that is perhaps If a on subsidiarity can us then it is The is to and for their on these and for their two on and subsidiarity at the of This from with and with at the Subsidiarity from two with this and in particular from by and Andreas Føllesdal on the of On the for to the dominant vocabulary of state sovereignty, I have much over the years from Hueglin and the The no conflicts of

David J. Howlett

In May 1991, an editor of the official magazine of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints reflected on a tumultuous quarter-century of liberalization within her church. She did so with a feature article previewed on the magazine's cover with the lines, “Framers remember formation of World Church Objectives,” and a picture of four of these framers. Those pictured were all elderly white American men. Ostensibly about a series of church objectives adopted in 1966, the article itself detailed the movement of the RLDS Church toward peace and justice theology, the inclusion of women in the priesthood, and a reframing of the very notion of mission in the church. In doing so, the article's writer included quotes from people involved in these changes. The individuals quoted had once held offices in the Council of Twelve Apostles or the church's First Presidency, the highest-ranking leadership groups in the church. The quotes were all from white American men.1In the 1970s, priesthood in the RLDS Church ranged from local priesthood who preached and presided over weekly meetings to denominational leaders who set church-wide policies. Until the mid-1980s, men filled all priesthood offices. Additionally, the RLDS Church, numbering 220,000 at its sesquicentennial in 1980, was overwhelmingly an American church, peopled by a white supermajority, even though it had a small presence in twenty-nine nations and an even smaller number of Black, Asian, Pacific Islander, Latino, and Indigenous Americans.2 Most senior church leaders in the 1960s and ‘70s were also white American men. These were the individuals who gave new revelations to the church, articulated church policies, and shaped things as mundane as hiring practices. Given this, the small cadre of historians who have investigated the RLDS Church's late twentieth-century liberalization have focused, perhaps understandably, on white American church leaders with graduate seminary degrees. These influential RLDS leaders participated in ecumenicism, taught peace and justice theology, and had transformative, global encounters as they spread the RLDS Church to Asia and Africa in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s.3This paper refocuses our attention on a different set of people who also shaped the church's rapid liberalization. These people included Barbara Howard, who wrote the article featured in my introduction. A longtime Saints Herald editor, Howard was also a founding member of a grassroots RLDS feminist consciousness-raising group. As I will argue, RLDS reformers like Howard allied with people across lines of identity, nationality, faith, and privilege, creating networks that helped make the church's liberalization plausible in the first place. Furthermore, the RLDS individuals and organizations that I will highlight in this essay gesture towards a broader story about how the New Left, forged in the fires of the 1960s, found religious denominations, like the RLDS Church, as fertile incubators for the extension of its projects across the global 1970s and 1980s. These were decades in which most scholars saw both liberal religion and the New Left in full decline, if not collapse.4 During these trying decades, the New Left emphasized the importance of grounding massive change in local organizations—in the small and the particular.In mid-twentieth century America, “small was big,” notes historian Daniel Immerwahr. This was particularly true of the New Left, that largely Western social movement advocating for identity-based rights in the 1960s. “Whereas the older leftism centered on trade unions and mass parties,” Immerwahr argues, “the new generation, enamored with ‘participatory democracy’ and ‘the beloved community,’ questioned the very basis for such organizations.”5 The New Left instead reveled in the democratic possibilities of small groups to create revolutionary change. For instance, the philosopher Herbert Marcuse told a New York audience in 1968 that the New Left was “diffused, concentrated in small groups and around local activities, small groups which are highly flexible and autonomous,” forming a “political guerilla force in peace.”6 For activists like Marcuse and his allies in the paradigmatic New Left student group, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), smallness seemed an antidote to all social ills.By the early 1970s, influential sages, such as the Gandhian economist E. F. Schumacher, the author of the best-selling 1973 book Small Is Beautiful, promoted the virtues of smallness.7 Politicians joined this chorus, too. Ronald Reagan, hardly a paragon of the New Left, declared in 1975, “It is activity on a small, human scale that creates the fabric of community.”8 The valorization of smallness also had a creative global reach across the 1970s. For example, Filipino community organizers created small, networked student groups to resist Ferdinand Marcos's dictatorship, and feminists across the United States and the globe met in small groups they called “consciousness-raising” groups for education, sharing, and political advocacy.I did not choose the latter examples randomly; the community organizing movement and radical feminism had distinct manifestations within the RLDS Church in the 1970s and 1980s. In what follows, I will highlight two individuals who exemplify these movements in the RLDS Church: the RLDS feminist theologian turned Unitarian, Sharon Welch, and the radical Catholic, community organizer, and RLDS NGO employee, Toto Delfin. As I will show, their social movements helped transform the RLDS Church, asking leadership to reimagine hierarchy and cultivate a more participatory understanding of the church. The RLDS Church, in turn, partially embraced these visions, redefining itself as a “Community of Christ” and proclaiming itself a “prophetic people,” not a “people with a prophet.”The RLDS Church's decision to do so asks us to reflect on the sources for rapid change within late-twentieth-century American-based churches. Put another way, did change come from above, below, or beside? More provocatively, the RLDS Church's evolution should also give us pause to ask what we mean by thinking about some religious groups as being successful in late-twentieth-century America. For instance, historians often talk about the success of evangelicals and Pentecostals in the late twentieth century. At the same time, they invoke words like “decline” when they write about liberal or ecumenical Protestants and liberal Jews from the same era. While it may seem less polite to do so with Restoration traditions, many everyday members of these churches point to the success of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the decline of the RLDS Church (Community of Christ). “Success” in these formulations, of course, is based upon the relative number of adherents that either one or the other group has, as well as the size of their endowments.I would like us to consider a slightly different question of and metric for success in this essay. In short, I would like us to think about how particular groups within a denomination can change their group internally. That is, how well do interest groups within their denomination change policies and orientations and exert wider cultural influence? As I will argue, New Left-aligned groups within the RLDS Church in the 1970s and 1980s might have influenced a numerically declining church, but they were astoundingly successful in giving their parent church a new set of orientations and policies. To make this case, I will first turn to Sharon Welch's story and detail the influence of small feminist groups upon the 1970s RLDS Church.In April 1977, twenty-five-year-old Sharon Patton Welch delivered a paper at a conference sponsored by an RLDS feminist consciousness-raising group called AWARE or Awake, Worship, Action, Renewal, and Education. The conference, held in Independence, Missouri, focused on women and the priesthood. Its keynote address featured a feminist theologian from Vanderbilt, where Sharon Patton Welch was a graduate student. For the April conference, Welch boldly proffered a constructive critique of the very idea of priesthood in her church.Welch began by methodically showing her audience problems with the notions of hierarchy in the Melchisedec and Aaronic Priesthoods and clerical Christianity. She argued that it was not just that the RLDS priesthood excluded women; the priesthood itself was based upon a hierarchical worldview, elevating some humans and lowering others. In an act of feminist resourcement, Welch offered a pragmatic intervention that drew upon particular RLDS traditions to counter this hierarchy. “If authority is defined as the ability to evoke skills and creative initiative in others,” she argued, “rather than the right to govern and lead, it seems appropriate that we think of it as emerging out of the social acceptance of one's effort to facilitate the growth of others.”9 This was what made priesthood a possibly transformative, liberating experience. Welch opined that such a system would enable the RLDS Church “to expand its ministry as it is open to the variety within each person, and is no longer restricted by fixed, limited definitions of the talents peculiar to each sex. This type of system discards the safety of defined patterns of service and hierarchical patterns of control. It is an acceptance of the challenge to develop a community characterized by collegiality and trust.”10 While somewhat vague, Welch envisioned a system of authority within the church that could be characterized as an interconnected web of consciousness-raising groups.Radical feminists created consciousness-raising groups in the late 1960s as a means for education, agitation, and, ultimately, they hoped, revolution. Many individuals who identified as radical feminists had felt shut out of New Left and Civil Rights advocacy groups where feminist issues might be marginalized or even ridiculed. In response, radical feminists advocated for forming small, cell-like groups where individuals could come together for face-to-face interactions, listen and validate each other's experiences, and be educated on feminist pedagogy and issues—and thus have their consciousnesses raised. These groups stressed egalitarian processes, too, where no one person was to dominate discussions, and group tasks would be rotated among participants, obviating the need for the specialization of roles or hierarchical leaders. In the 1970s, feminist consciousness-raising groups became places for radical political advocacy, personal growth, and group therapy.11In some ways, 1970s feminist consciousness-raising groups mirrored the best of what Welch had experienced in her church. Born and raised in the tiny farming town of Dimmitt, Texas, Welch attended a small RLDS branch (congregation) mostly composed of her family. In later reminiscences, she emphasized how it affirmed her, giving her great confidence in herself. Her voice was taken seriously, and she grew to believe that her calling in life was to be a scholar and earn a PhD, a degree that no one in her social sphere possessed.12 Welch also reflected that RLDS summer family camps, called by RLDS folks “reunions,” were really “socialist experiments.” “People paid what they could pay and donated their labor,” she noted. The RLDS folks who attended these camps were “farmers, janitors, and truck drivers,” and the vast majority lacked a college education. “The most uneducated worker,” she noted, “might have the insight in a class or prayer meeting that changed people's lives. There was no elitism.” As a child and teen, “it just seemed so natural for me to see people living in cooperative ways”—a stark contrast to the outside world.13Welch was a gifted high school student and left West Texas for Michigan State in a she to the RLDS Church's liberal she in but she did not That when she with RLDS her the and they and it an of feminist possibilities in Welch later that was I of the cultural of religion so in also her with RLDS feminists who became her and like Barbara Howard her to a small, RLDS where all in of priesthood Additionally, Welch was to do that no RLDS women had at the a graduate to she to in but not she and Barbara Howard attended the meeting of an RLDS feminist consciousness-raising group in in group was not the first RLDS feminist consciousness-raising group. A small group of and at had the in and it out to in some of its of these and and the group that would Welch to their meeting at the of in Independence, RLDS women and a to the RLDS Church's the leadership group in the church, composed of the First Presidency, the Council of Twelve and the of The began by This is on of all the women in the church by of their have from full within the church not to ask that another or be filled by one of the many women church but that a true in so that no one who is as and to tasks be for a this time, women of the in the RLDS Church, they held very with of authority within the church's and local Most of these priesthood and an RLDS conference women from in the priesthood. the that did not priesthood were largely filled by men. In the RLDS World a to and more women for but was no hiring 1973 and Given this the of the feminist the RLDS World AWARE women RLDS women from across the church to their At one such conference in AWARE women RLDS if they could their meeting in official conference as other interest like or their In response, AWARE member a longtime and the RLDS Church's a to the group. AWARE women their meeting on paper and in This act AWARE of new and a group of within the 1970s RLDS AWARE feminists to their and each other even if AWARE members had to be more when in official church AWARE met in the of its members in the Its meetings were a with and within the a it held in with many other 1970s feminist consciousness-raising In this way, AWARE women to the church they would be embraced more its two decades of AWARE became a for and AWARE women feminist also local women for the first for of in their advocated for more in church and helped a advocating for women in the RLDS priesthood. AWARE also the conference at which student Sharon Welch the Welch delivered her address in 1977, she was to called to a different As she later the RLDS Church in graduate At that women were not being and it was a the women who were but who were not and who movement being taken on She that “the for me was that more people of Jesus and the of in liberal not Welch to in her became as she began to other religious In Welch became a and taught as an of at the first person with in Restoration to at was not in her another RLDS left the RLDS Church in the early 1980s and was in the United Church of Welch, she a feminist at a in her case, of at AWARE and from in the RLDS Church, the became a college and and the latter a feminist in she that inclusion was not even for the majority in the 1970s RLDS This mirrored among as historian argues, the decline of churches in the 1970s can be to number of but one was that these liberal traditions were not liberal to many New Left activists in the Welch and some of her feminist who left the RLDS church a with it in Welch that was not so a the RLDS but a of what it taught For a time, Welch to to RLDS and feminist In she a to a on RLDS by Herald the official RLDS The official RLDS the in turn, a of Welch's first of and A of Welch even to in to an AWARE where she with the women with she first experienced a consciousness-raising life a of radical within the RLDS Church in the 1970s. While Welch left the RLDS Church, she and her feminist helped create an in which could be in the first place. She also a of RLDS that in which the priesthood itself became more egalitarian and even women to be to the RLDS priesthood in was not the one by the possibilities of grassroots In this the RLDS embraced a global in which community organizing could radical social in the and Welch's in on the of an RLDS NGO that did just to community organizing in the RLDS Church, we turn from the to the where radical who an RLDS NGO a new understanding of in the 1970s and a in the of in that time, as his called had for and its parent for more than in a for an with me that the and a told a I raised my a senior and a Filipino A This of a that from of in community that began a the first of Filipino and some of the Filipino Ferdinand Marcos's During these called the as it in the first of the called out the and The with and even student many joined the Filipino and its the New organizations to create social such as the Council for or in This latter group and from the community organizing movement in the United States by and from American the 1970s, community organizing like the as student activists to as places to create radical democratic from its not or could their and create change. A community could facilitate change but could not the they the people to for their articulated and helped the 1970s, most in the were that gave A community also in this was to local by the 1960s, the had the as a for local political and many of sponsored by Filipino churches or church became of to Marcos's policies and of this in the Born to a farming family in had attended a high school and college that many radical a with a community organizing NGO college in NGO to in the of to and his among the was when allied with local his in their small, upon the just the and would have if had NGO out of the and a for another NGO in met another radical NGO who was a was from a radical family. was one of the a group of who the for its and his had as to in the human for for a of liberal human the the more radical than their were particularly in community organizing to the of human found an to do an RLDS Church RLDS Church itself in the in 1966, four from a tiny church. These of their and family networks the RLDS church. also helped create the church's first NGO in the or This being in the of the First and Marcos's of in Marcos's with the New in the in A small RLDS in the of was in the The all of to their and from the the members of the RLDS and In RLDS Filipino leaders for to their RLDS and the church's the American and Filipino RLDS leaders upon a The would to from the and the of the the of their the RLDS would that the to in the new Furthermore, they would in how to like and this from of for This was successful as it was and As an of this, began to influence the RLDS Church, American thinking that local to in the in that the attention of American such as the early 1970s, his to the a mission of in and the RLDS this mission as its As the RLDS RLDS to the This the the of RLDS leaders and In RLDS the attended a on at the also the projects by in in an employee, was as the of for had not of a community organizing but of and their In the early an that to community organizing and human this to his In interest in community organizing to Toto a of the they created a they called or a that had a life of its in the RLDS and I have the I will just an from our radical of the and his valorization of the local the the could be for a variety of In it the to make liberalization in for the on this focused on in and of the of the global in the a and RLDS and a cultural and radical to participatory human to their This was on a too. the of the New Left and in the decades the 1970s emphasized the denominational leaders the of participatory human to a new of of their denominational for instance, church leaders opined that their denomination to be more from meetings to World became a that or even their to the church. It also some and offices. The and of the of which was one had a on the RLDS In a group of American RLDS leaders a to the church's of that meeting a to the denomination as “Community of The church who this emphasized that the denomination to be than people with a It was a of the and of the movement in the very of the American-based Barbara Herald article quoted at the of this Council of Twelve Apostles think we would be a a we had not the of that and I think be a if we had the might see and in of the 1980s. For example, of denominational for is of what it was in the late and its by a these latter the great of the 1970s and 1980s was a In this, of Christ other in it to if the success of the is by different small groups of people on the of the RLDS Church had created successful within the denomination by the late 1980s. RLDS could point to small things that had to projects the the inclusion of women in the priesthood, a networked with other liberal and peace and justice the what do we make of of liberalization and its as a The words of one of the of the church's liberalization a In Sharon Welch she was not about the of the global justice one that radical and Welch's RLDS American feminists helped cultivate within the RLDS Church in the 1970s and 1980s. she is that global justice by the and of who and to doing all that I can to it one should such a from a who grew in a small on the of a small For people like Welch and her of Christ is an in small

Kamilla Nazirkhanova, Vrushank Gunjur, X. Pilli Cruz-De Jesus, Dan Boneh

Ensuring the privacy of votes in an election is crucial for the integrity of a democratic process. Often, voting power is delegated to representatives (e.g., in congress) who subsequently vote on behalf of voters on specific issues. This delegation model is also widely used in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). Although several existing voting systems used in DAOs support private voting, they only offer public delegation. In this paper, we introduce Kite, a new protocol that enables $\textit{private}$ delegation of voting power for DAO members. Voters can freely delegate, revoke, and re-delegate their power without revealing any information about who they delegated to. Even the delegate does not learn who delegated to them. The only information that is recorded publicly is that the voter delegated or re-delegated their vote to someone. Kite accommodates both public and private voting for the delegates themselves. We analyze the security of our protocol within the Universal Composability (UC) framework. We implement Kite as an extension to the existing Governor Bravo smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain, that is widely used for DAO governance. Furthermore, we provide an evaluation of our implementation that demonstrates the practicality of the protocol. The most expensive operation is delegation due to the required zero-knowledge proofs. On a consumer-grade laptop, delegation takes between 7 and 167 seconds depending on the requested level of privacy.

Rolf Carlson

No abstract is available for this record.

Steven Fesmire

I sometimes ask my students if they would be willing to raise their hand and pledge the following: There's a single basis of moral life, and it determines the right way to proceed. I have access to this supreme basis. When others don't agree with me, it's because they have the wrong faith commitments, they aren't analyzing things properly, or they aren't letting conscience be their guide. Agreement with me is a prerequisite to solving our problems. Consequently, I have nothing to learn about these matters from those who disagree with me. Their participation is, at best, an irrelevant distraction and, at worst, an evil to be defeated. My diagnosis of the issue has precisely captured all that is morally relevant. It's exhaustive, hence beyond revision and reformulation.I rarely get any takers. After the students and I swap stories about those who might blithely take such a pledge, we invariably conclude that the pledgers are outnumbered by their counterparts: conservatives, liberals, and radicals who would, upon conscious reflection, reject this outright as closed-minded arrogance. Moreover, it quickly becomes clear that this pledge doesn't speak to the sort of people they wish to be. (I later explain that “ethical monists” accept the first sentence, “moral fallibilists” reject the second, and almost all moral philosophers would reject the baselessness of the rest.)And yet, our class conversation continues, how many of us certified broader-minded souls act as though complex problems come prepackaged with our interpretation of them? Do we prejudge and offhandedly dismiss alternative diagnoses of shared problems? However open-minded we may seem to ourselves, do we habitually react to others as though we're navigating with the one universal moral compass? Are our real behaviors implicated in this pledge that most of us would consciously disavow?At this point, I introduce another classroom activity, inspired by Anthony Weston's A 21st Century Ethical Toolbox. Suppose we wanted to codify rules to sabotage democratic dialogue and make debates as fruitless as possible. The idea here is to spell out rules that maximize the distance between “us” and “them,” ensuring that possibilities for cooperatively setting and achieving social goals—like peace, security, justice, public health, or sustainability—go forever unnoticed. For example, consider things like “stereotype the other side” or “prepare your comeback instead of listening.”I divide students into groups and ask them to develop five more rules. They come up with an excellent tool kit for torpedoing public deliberation: “Approach any debate as a zero-sum game.” “Widen the gulf that separates us.” “Be uncharitable: always present your side at its best and the other at its worst.” “Ignore context.” “Be angrier and talk louder.” “Be smug.” “Trust your anger; it would never steer you wrong.” “Inflate certainty.” “Gaslight.” “Dog whistle.” “Assume your interlocuter is clueless.” “Reject complexity.” “Be visibly offended by any questioning of your conclusions.” “Act as though your values and concerns invariably overrule theirs.”Gradually some of the fun fades. Is there any link between the pledge activity and your new diabolical tool kit, I ask? The sense of the class is that the tool kit clarifies the practical upshot of the pledge, identifying legitimized behaviors. We end up recognizing ourselves, myself included. We purposefully drew up a malicious playbook for undermining democracy, and it mirrored the status quo. Many of my liberal-identified American students interpret the activity as a send-up of conservatives. Their imagined tool kit-users sport “Make America Great Again” hats and threaten DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) advocates. Meanwhile, many conservative students interpret the activity as damning liberal wokeness, “virtue signaling,” and “cancel culture.” Through this discussion, the class gets an experiential introduction to work in moral psychology that bears on moral politics, such as Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind.We conclude this introductory unit of the course with issues that tend to counteract fuzzy relativism by evoking strong condemnation, such as Nussbaum's essay on female genital cutting (“Judging Other Cultures”). Joining millions of ethics students before them, most conclude that extreme relativism leaves much to be desired as a coherent way to express the virtue of tolerance. Most want to show courage. Yet as they reach for their received language, many are now unnerved by their own pledge-like tone. They're habituated to assuming that a kind of moral fundamentalism is the irreplaceable steam that powers activism and advocacy, that resistance to injustice is unintelligible without it, and that the virtues of moral clarity and conviction somehow imply a my-way-or-the-highway approach.Shifting uncomfortably, we pause to explore our dissonance. Perhaps we're merely hypocrites, parading open-mindedness while betraying its opposite. Or perhaps we're beset with a neural vestige of moral tribalism, as Joshua Greene explored in Moral Tribes. Minimally, we're exhibiting what social psychologist Lee Ross studied as the illusion of objectivity, the error of assuming that our perceptions, motivations, and assessments are objective while those who disagree with us are irrational (Ross 751–52). But there are additional philosophically interesting things at work, and they highlight conditions that pour gasoline on our usual hypocrisy and attribution errors. I'll explore some of these today by asking five questions about moral fundamentalism: (1) What is it? (2) Is it really such a bad thing? (3) Isn't it good for motivating social action? (4) Do many theorists inadvertently legitimize it? and (5) Can we educate beyond it?I call this cluster of pledge-and-tool kit-like habits “moral fundamentalism.” The term was used by Mark Johnson (163) as a synonym for moral absolutism, and by Robert Baker (201) as a broad-brush label for any principle-based moral universalism. But, for three reasons, it's helpful to disentangle the term from just any commitment to moral absolutism: Philosophers who are moral absolutists generally condemn pledge-like traits, and their theoretical commitments don't necessarily imply fundamentalist behaviors.A name is needed for the offending habits, whatever one's worldview. Rejecting self-certainty in theory doesn't imply rejecting it in practice.Moral fundamentalist habits thrive today among groups whose outlook seems little troubled by the lack of a final mooring for their beliefs.Moral fundamentalism can be ostensively defined as the cluster of habits exhibited in “the pledge” activity. A moral fundamentalist may be more precisely defined, minimally, as someone disposed to act as if they have access to (1) the exclusively right way to diagnose moral or political problems, and (2) the single approvable practical solution to any particular problem.Although the word “fundamentalism” is contested (Peels 1), it automatically suggests a helpful analogy to rigid religious dogmatism, which carries the idea that a select few have accessed self-evident ideals that should be heeded without public investigation, critique, and reformation. The dogmatist's notion that some statements are inherently and self-sufficiently true (Dewey, “Propositions” 171–72) is diametrically opposed to Peirce's fallibilist notion that a “skeptical element” is involved in any claim that follows on the heels of inquiry. Accordingly, in moral education, the ardent fundamentalist leader is contented only after a young member of the flock arrives safely at a foregone conclusion.Fundamentalists speak authoritatively about all-encompassing essences, including the essence of morality. As pragmatists have long observed, such essentialism freezes creative processes—through which people work things out together—into static things. Pretending to speak for the universal essence of morality turns to stone what should be a collaborative project (cf. Appiah, Lies That Bind 97). Fundamentalism turns moral artistry into moralizing.Fealty to inerrant essential doctrines or principles isn't a promising resource for public dialogue, restoration of trust, or reconciliation. When combined with nationalism, jingoism, xenophobia, racism, massive out-migration, and economic dislocation, it's a resource for reactionary oppression, rage, and fanaticism on all sides. We must find our diverse ways beyond the hell we inflict in the name of righteous certainty.The preceding discussion clarifies, I hope, several senses in which moral fundamentalism is a vice. For a moral fundamentalist, the main moral, social, or political problem is presumed to be that others don't get the problem (Norton 37), as though events carry their own meanings. Or the main problem is presumed to be the failure of others to bow to our brilliant solutions. Never mind that these solutions are ideas that flow from values and purposes, and that have consequences that reshape subsequent facts to be interpreted. And never mind aspects of the situation that are obfuscated by our way of casting the problem or are occluded by our principles. We too readily assume that, unlike their concerns, ours are value-neutral and free of interest-driven rationalizations and biases. We never doctor facts to predetermine results.Moral fundamentalism is a drag on democracy. This drag is to be expected when people feel backed into a corner or when their social position limits opportunities. But fundamentalism anywhere blocks communication and inquiry across differences. Whenever people suppose their reading of a problem is exhaustive, they autocratically predefine what's relevant, and they covertly prejudge alternatives. They assume, as a matter of course, that others are stubbornly refusing to accept the interpretation that (in Dewey's words) is staring right out at them (Dewey, Public and Its Problems 38).When we disagree about problems, it's one thing to reflectively conclude that others are willfully refusing to face conditions, as Eddie Glaude explores in Begin Again. It's quite another thing to start with the default assumption that we alone are taking the wide view.Despite these habits—not because of them—moral fundamentalists have historically done many good things through their dealings with opposing fundamentalisms. But what else have they done that might in future be minimized by delegitimizing moral fundamentalism? When we take up the one-way mentality, what happens to opportunities for reflexively learning our way toward a healthier, more just, and more sustainable future across the dynamic spectrum of values, beliefs, and concerns?Does activism require and benefit from moral fundamentalism? In order to motivate actions that restructure conditions and redress wrongs, must people harden their hearts and minds against the clamor of contradictory theories, both speaking and acting as if they're governed by final truths?If so, then perhaps a kind of incorrigibility is a virtue of public philosophizing. To some intellectuals, the international resurgence of gaslighting demagogues and self-seeking cronyism is incontrovertible proof that we can ultimately expect very little of the public. It's assumed by some that the public switch is permanently set to dim, so it's up to intellectuals to take up the civilizing burden of enlightenment. If this requires us to default to moral fundamentalism, then so be it.However, we got here by expecting too little of the public. We've long been running self-verifying experiments in low expectations. Electing or hiring competent executives who are accustomed to complex cognition can help, but it can't solve the deepest problem of all: the failure to create a cultural in which we may in “the kind of people that a about what we can expect of a democratic have a long from to the The of was the debate in the between and that ideas in when they when they have the of right which they as has it, of Public in an of that in a social require and is by the right and are at as as the of class of from the if they to the of the a that many of this have to with Public that the of the and is with that must with by and complex what to be with by who problems so that accept the that is for of public as and nothing democratic more the idea that intellectuals must the burden of inquiry from the and little of the while the of on A outlook all too into the of that demagogues are in order to We and more have been the as the from to but Dewey's of when by in facts to on social can and do to at to a that is for (Dewey, Public and Its are of many but that was about the of those they don't from but from and bad education, these a an or the moral of the and Its Problems the solution to a of the When a in toward the end of in a young a in which up the that would a I the that we should with and if it people would that I and would this If I that the to solving problems in that there is theory people in its and the theory into a In to the illusion of and consciously that was to it, to with their as in moral fundamentalism to the to a end of to be in to but was it the only or most by the an outlook intellectuals at our or moral best Public and Its of of as a to social as the idea that “the of be to and to in moral that if they're to of mind their and be so by and class that the final be and and democratic was of and expected that the of communication can the to predefine problems, as it across and from what been a of and Its Problems this out of a that is to all who it out of a practical that it is our only communication invariably of moral and these be on a of course, to be which or a tone. This may be to a or social to strong moral or or it may be more a matter of cultural or a to or it may be of what in and the Moral an of taking a position here on or what conditions, such might be though this more I that has been to that it's implicated in moral fundamentalist behaviors that are for and political life, and (I that has the strong moral are as to as or of course, this that people in ethics and to the that needed an or needed Moral isn't by The for is to the and that we (Dewey, for philosophers reject any fundamentalism, but in the they to speak for the essence of morality and into a instead of an and collaborative This the one-way on theory of for that matter how one's supreme moral is it rarely one's on all of the that one to and moral the of word after always There's more to any situation can be by a single or just as more to any what us about of that to the to which we're and by our particular and all at the from the of We can but we can't Dewey's of the of moral as with are of that us in This of a practical if are in with then can to that or This is to the of assuming a single for a complex and example, the with some in equity, a in at in the was in and that out more that may have more ethics should be because it must with including social in the virtues such as social issues of to resource as and Do have a to on and and the of and toward public There's experiential basis for a or that with all of these issues of and one of these the and this lack of a is the in ethics the the of the to which of these ways of should Ethical have A alternative is to the assumption that a good theory If we set up our as a to particular conditions and it can practical with complex problems without among values or that can what we to an and (Dewey, and with in that is an essential of moral and merely on the that from the of a or to lack of access to to into our or was that there is and right in conditions, for and about which to make among alternatives. Moral and in and we to about them because they require us to that are best through is without that is most by those who are and the assumption legitimized by is presumed to and (Dewey, A situation may seem to be a the but or to into our or to an just or perhaps to an of would that there been an or best through the all and the or other when it to can the for (Dewey, A of on a is to what we should do on the right but to and that are most for a particular may for But whatever we with their is what is (Dewey, and for by matter that troubled us to in the first aren't we with moral fundamentalism? but its and are Moral fundamentalism is a because it into what's and bad inquiry is more and when learn to be with the of reflection, to and of of the and of any or in and in creative are values of a democratic a after the of and in the of our best for beyond moral When and moral and through that are and students can learn to take in events of by and can to public of what's at and to habits that public the with a of moral and the of the for a a the of and by to own After with the and with the to the Their was to the between the and the of from a an of its liberal the in sustainable to the that separates from the of what they (cf. The idea was that to the of the in which take This can't be by the classroom as a or what to and into the classroom so that students the moral, and of the up with and in their and they into the This that students by and with a of out in and to was by a The out against at of the a for on with these in their They that the was to sustainable to be a or a The economic of a of must work a that doesn't to the would a to in the they that it's more to both of an that been discussion values and among the The the with a that most of the and If was it would be After a the the into the from The The and many other would a in the to international was by a Is the an to the of Is the to for all to and to their an that the To that this would be an of and many several on and students who in the The for a of to from at the was to carry out its the the after the was The a by many as as some the this with students as an in asking them to explore a by would moral The between and sustainable The is and in its while the to moral beyond to to been a for a against what they which is from They for a moral between and We can with a who is a but both in what the to be that we agree that of the of was the only we should agree that and that as must be doesn't name and for who are and this of moral Is the call for a in their way They that can't be so for to with sustainable for and a in the an opposing of righteous A before the a talk at the in which that the must be on if it is to so rules out experiments in or are hypocrites, and the best that can be of is that at they're as a fundamentalist who and a against and by refusing to the of and to these a such as the idea that a best, or can be in of the that require us to make to the of the of a right doesn't imply that all are in their fundamentalism is at with the in any democracy. As that is to “the and conditions of discussion, and That is the problem of the and Its Problems We should students to and to be of both and and and we should them and problem of them to fundamentalism with more of the we a more that is but students are to and when their and have been by problem solving at a They can and the situation at hand (cf. and and and about ways of all to public as the for a more and of social This many by students and to with to the some by and most got used to other (cf. Appiah, In students that they in their to and They and some the of moral to the learning that beyond the but in later stories the they from The them them with a and moral their beyond moral

Phyllis Cole

MARGARET Fuller's essay-letter to William Henry Channing in the summer of 1842, “A Credo,” is her most forthright expression of radical Transcendentalism, affirming an evolutionary process of nature and spirit in both metaphysical principle and Biblical symbolism. Fuller directs her well-established understanding of world religions to comparison with Christianity, and she at least implies the possibility of new roles for women in the world's future. In both respects “A Credo” anticipates her major work, Woman in the Nineteenth Century.1 More immediately, however, she offers her testimony at a moment when competing ideas of Jesus stand at the forefront of the Transcendentalist movement and its related network of Unitarian churches. Fuller's statement of natural religion finds private expression but speaks powerfully within a collective history.Though occasionally excerpted in collections of her writing and commented upon by scholars, “A Credo” has lacked a critical text to stand among her works. This documentary project aims to provide Fuller's complete statement as well as position it within the Transcendentalist movement. The manuscript of “A Credo” has been overlooked largely through circumstances of transmission. Channing included a selection in Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852), while also censoring its content. However, by 1883 he valued this statement enough to send it to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, then working on his biography of Fuller, as a central expression of her “Prophetic Spirituality & Conscious Communion with the Divine Influent Life.”2 Higginson's more secular study found no place for “A Credo,” though he preserved it among the Fuller papers he eventually donated to the Boston Public Library. Soon a scholar of German Romanticism, Frederick Augustus Braun, transcribed the text as an appendix to his book on Fuller and Goethe; however, he used it only to argue for Fuller as a disciple of the German Romantic writer, “not a Transcendentalist at all.”3 With the recovery of Fuller's work since the 1960s, “A Credo” has been excerpted and commented upon several times, whether from manuscript or from Braun. Always its participation in Transcendentalist discourse is assumed. Most recently, a study of Fuller's religious skepticism in this essay has focused on the constraints preventing a woman writer from publishing such views in 1842.4 None of the recent scholarship, however, proposes publication of “A Credo” for current readers.Fuller's testimony is capacious in scale and perspective, open to examination in more than one way. It offers an important sign of Fuller's growing religious feminism by attributing cosmic origins to a “spirit” that is also “angel mother,” later referred to again as “she.” At the same time, Fuller speaks in primarily masculine terms, even while naming deities and prophets, as she addresses the Transcendentalists through Channing. The shifting narrative perspective of “A Credo” allows these concerns to emerge together. First, she tells in abstract terms of creation, its future unknown to “this being who now writes.” As she envisions it, the human race has no binary separation from either nature or spirit, participating in one pantheistic entirety. Nor is gender a significant internal division; soon she speaks as “we,” the collective humanity that, like the spirit, breaks through obstruction and achieves knowledge. But then an individual, intensely devotional but self-affirming “I” emerges in her account of Jesus: one who has “no objection to the miracles, except where they do not happen to please me,” who finally believes in Christ “because I can do without him.” Fuller implicitly acknowledges this first-person voice as a woman's when she specifies the Biblical text for a sermon “[i]f I were to preach on this subject.” She has no opportunity to preach, but “A Credo” is her laywoman's sermon by letter.All of the issues evoked in this statement—the miracles of Jesus, the status of the Bible, the power of nature and intuition—had defined the Transcendentalist controversy since 1838, when Ralph Waldo Emerson's “Divinity School Address” characterized the church's “noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus” as “Monster” rather than “Miracle.” In response, conservative Unitarian Andrews Norton blasted Emerson's words as the “latest form of infidelity,” going on to argue for the Bible's verifiable history of Jesus as the only ground for faith. Emerson made no direct response, but colleagues sprang to his defense by affirming truth as perceived by the individual mind. In “A Credo” Fuller was offering her own perspective on the miracles controversy. Earlier she had reported to Emerson on Norton's latest publications as well as describing the “paper-pellet” aimed by a younger critic at “that peculiarly nervous sect styled Transcendentalists.”5 Now, as she wrote to Channing, she composed “A Credo” because a friend had asked specifically for her views of Jesus.6 Fuller's own “infidelity” joined with Emerson and his allies, even as she went beyond them in directly presenting her cosmology of past and future.A long process of self-expression and interchange with others led to her testimony, extending from years before Emerson's manifesto to the moment of writing in 1842. Fuller held a position of quasi-clerical authority among Transcendentalists by this time. The third season of her Conversations with women had just concluded: since 1839 she had been leading path-breaking discussions of the truths suggested by Greek mythology and the fine arts, with frequent cross-reference to the Bible. She had described her first session's theme as a “genealogy of heaven and earth.”7 In the same period that such ruminations on divinity and humanity grew, furthermore, Fuller was serving as editor of the movement's Dial magazine, soliciting and judging work on religious and philosophical subjects from both men and women. All of those to be named in this essay had contributed to it. As editor, she reached out widely to the community of progressive belief. In “A Credo” she quoted a sentiment without identifying its author: “The soul must do its own immortal work.” Such words might have been Emerson's, but instead they were from a poem by Eliza Thayer Clapp, a woman outside Fuller's immediate circle, as published in the Dial a year before.8“A Credo” epitomizes Fuller's vision during this time of double cultural leadership; moreover, it embodies the personal transformation that she claimed amidst such work. At the opening of the second season of Conversations, in autumn 1840, Fuller wrote to Channing that she had found a warm reception from the group after telling of her “great changes,” recent experiences of mystical identification with the divine. In the same letter she also reported on her own writing experiments, “The Magnolia of Lake Pontchartrain” and “Yuca Filamentosa,” which would soon be published anonymously, with her as editor, in the Dial. Along with “Leila,” a third piece of experimental fiction, these appeared throughout the months between Fuller's “great changes” and the beginning of 1842, the year of “A Credo.” In them she affirmed the power of female forms in the natural and spiritual worlds: woman-identified flowers bursting into bloom under the moon's influence; a grand tree, “Queen of the South,” singing to herself in solitary power; the goddess “Leila,” her wild hair blowing in the wind, who embodied the Holy Ghost's descent into matter. And the personal immersion in divine nature that Fuller expressed in such work was confirmed by a contemporary journal entry remembering her earlier self-consecration, when after exiting from church she had found illumination in the sun's glory and vowed to sow “new and immortal plants in the garden of God.”9 The revelations of 1840 and their expression in fictional and autobiographical form offer a direct prelude to her apparently spontaneous essay-letter of 1842.Significantly, Fuller wrote her creedal statement as a letter rather than in published form, even though the Dial had already offered her the possibilities of anonymous authorship. Any statement that directly claimed kinship with divinity apart from Christ and the church was a scandal, all the more, as Caitlin Smith notes, from a woman.10 But in addition, Fuller was prompted to write “A Credo” by particular friends, both the person who initially asked about Jesus and the letter's recipient, Channing, amidst an ongoing dialogue with him. Letters underlay all of the Transcendentalist movement, as texts with a life of their own. Later writing tearfully from Rome, Fuller told Caroline Sturgis of her need to continue “friendships I had paid for with so much heart's blood,” admitting that without letters from her and from Channing, “so many thoughts in the long past seemed to flee from me.”11 “A Credo” lies within that body of thought and feeling. Here I will suggest how four epistolary exchanges anticipate its voice and theological ideas: first those with James Freeman Clarke and Emerson, then those with her even more memorable partners, Sturgis and Channing.From the early 1830s, James Freeman Clarke supported her growth in new German learning, later a strong foundation for “A Credo.” With him she waxed about and of this friend to the about the who the history his by and how and had Fuller also reported to Clarke and Frederick Henry on her immersion in Biblical under the of German She thought of from its expressed in and found in a new to her exchanges and her Biblical immersion directly in “A Credo.” Fuller's of a in as both and have in particular from who had for the of nature and humanity out of Biblical furthermore, to “A Credo,” even as like in the truth of with Emerson was both and through their long In 1840 she the power of his work first him it in four years later she it from the was to how much more I it now than at I the now I the The years do not in “A Credo” was in its of it was also not with however, and after the “great changes” later in 1840, she his her of mystical have I to the central she to her she wrote not the friend I the same year that she composed “A Credo,” in his “The Emerson the movement him as it in or not she wrote in to her essay found a position by on the of not their to the And where Emerson characterized the Transcendentalist as one who from the for it to offer work of response, Fuller both nature and humanity in and As she had to Caroline she rather than the who seemed to have She but also Fuller's a friend with she both of the beginning Fuller's letters expressed an upon Greek and mythology even while as well about the of Jesus as a friend and of She quoted about the his directly to the rather than the who She was a in these letters by the need for and whether with or with its its its the and the growth would only she do not direct like the But is in the Fuller this friend as the first to of her “great changes” in I is found And at the of is can be no but all the in must be of from Emerson, she found with In both their and their expression of religious Fuller's letters to her directly anticipate the of “A Credo,” where she by as an of within the spirit and by the in Fuller's however, was the friend who directly “A Credo.” with William Henry Channing out of Dial when Fuller from the to to in the grand she a new it on 1840 But their as to the after only grand their letters were to Fuller her own of and to in the before with Channing both the of her and the “great changes” in her first claimed her as a as an to she out in after her personal with the of I were a and then would be I in this of Divine I out into before I it. I I I I More was at for her than a to authority as a as she that with for the particular her to Divine the and that she would soon more in “A Credo.” With an from her to she her own and those of Channing in the of the Unitarian to a sermon that the new to an of and Fuller the instead as for herself to for would now preach the Holy as as have been and instead of the understanding and instead Fuller was her own religious apart from church or of however, not Fuller's for such a among the claimed to the Unitarian than she had James Clarke a for the of the he and Fuller but not And Channing, to this moment his an focused on the of humanity in Christ he claimed a religion that would this is the he wrote to his of Transcendentalist on the Boston that year to the about and Fuller had no as Caroline later an between Fuller told Channing in how much she sermon which with the of Soon such ideas in “A on the and in which to a theological manifesto and in his from the Unitarian of the and authority claimed by their on miracles as of his But he as the of his of and Clarke Channing joined in the of Fuller, while their of his views in the new of also held of her Credo” might be Fuller's statement of to Channing in of Christ had seemed at first a for In early of 1842, Channing wrote to his of an for all At the same time, however, he a of Christianity, Jesus as of the of in And though his from such his letter first a new of the of beyond so as to a which the not the Fuller of this and soon asked Channing to how to At the same time she him as directly as he had just The she had been to him the of the its As “A Credo” would the of that she affirmed had beyond Jesus, both through the and the essay also both directly and was the one contemporary she named in it, to his in and from the as of the had claimed that an like that of to his thought at which with the of In “A Credo,” Fuller both and his of her for But this just after she had affirmed in the even it was rather than the of Fuller his life as of a She of Jesus at the of an by naming and before even the in to be from Jesus and prophets, her evolutionary as form was for future At the of “A Credo,” the sermon that she to preach might have been to both Channing and as she offered as its text to his is for that I he so that the spirit her journal from the Emerson that Fuller wrote in an to “A Credo.” with Emerson, a of letters from Channing, she herself to both must own no to but the Waldo must not in William in the fine that has I have of Channing, she she not need the is at in is to to a to but it is affirmed in the of own and the soul and nature all I have church where I by and Fuller was from the earlier statement as it had both the forms of and her own within it. In vision and “A Credo” is Fuller's most testimony about and the soul and by a and in to exchanges within the Transcendentalist is a spirit and it all is whether of or its it to it is to be an of forms not in the of this being who now of as This is the or publication of spirit upon the like in the This is a a new as for for for the of as through his he the which the divine The is in the of was this second the divine to for for for the in the which the as the of it in the of the of is when he is is as through and has no to this as through and of into the nature of the Divine it is from own though the of where all already is this must has been by the of being must be for and only in time not do him and led by of of then the of the The moment have through an not but by the of to was to the and with soul that is it would that the Divine expressed his to more in than in the forms of and through him the which his forms of nature only in whether from or because he is not to the of the when is in a when he is not so with all as to their spirit, also must be at the form of nature and of the she has been to through those of men in the to one that this and spirit in the human But and is a of enough is through a to the and obstruction on the of through all the of thought the is in I well and many and offer to the whether of whether of do not to an upon the position and of because I of his and the of his The history of the the of the suggest already of being than and which more this of But I do his life to be the in one of in the and that all these to and when on these strong through which on the ground but how the in the to the as he now these forms is a of and a soul of the is to to to be And as the of spirit, a new for its is one in the garden of the his many religion The the history of the human it has into the but its several though expressed the not beyond and a the history of however, have been more and more and so in the history of of the have several is men from only in being made through the and words of is whether as or but its of expression though of it is is As the to its so do to the of do this through the others through the The first second these all all so as they to the of their and so as they to that of their as is a a form is as its as the the and is its as the and within the that is expressed in the as the and the and of and the and his so has of thoughts and its upon it to a a form which stand before it a of the of its It with and it them with it its life of in the it with It one life as as or It has made it has it of the of which humanity is and one of the in respects the it has was the life of Jesus of so much in his history as I own in the long of and the truth of I a in the of Jesus be the of his its and its and I in the as in the I in the prophets, and that they not only their but the of a an one to at the the would have made of the of his a of the of the I that Jesus when the time was that he was peculiarly a and of I have to in the of his the circumstances were in time he was of a and the a truth of the I have no objection to the miracles, except where they do not happen to please not a soul so and new and I can him the and the without of of not in the they is to such a upon and all who have him since on the have their within to it not be when I to that though I all this it is of no to whether it or that the truth such to is and that the of for had the and offered it to as a to as as I it would be just as how the that from the also that I in the history of the and its in as presenting one of spiritual It is to and a of I have no from the of for as it I it as a thought to be expressed by the of not that they who their through the to were and not more than an to Christ has made many of his not place Christ then in a place than for or because his life was not it was and he is a of the But then I the Greek as one men in Christ as a a soul must its for many only when men from and him by the of their own open to of the from can he be as he do not he on his own expression he but this is not in I like to of this in he was not and where men so was and is and where he them to the they not they with him and do not I in Christ because I can do without because the truth he I because it is in the nature of own But I do not to do without him. is and I will not and on him. he to I will when I to by I I do not the church men who can with in it. I I more widely than body of men I And as I than in the apart for that will not to do The the than at a of again that to be and I will they to But that time is not I & in and I with I as to religion in It would be a of But for the I will how it is with as to I as where spirit in It the of it it it But so the and a and the It is only one of the same Jesus breaks through the of the world's like through the & I its I it. But it is a of the is about it, but its will not though I in them one I most men in need of them their their them be them in the of past But of I in these and in as they more, they beyond I would from them to I no from the past to own soul or not to the of Jesus of will of that that was in the it is not but and it must future will like to the and the but to But as an for a & a for a so Christ for a life more complete and than that of have had the to and have a to out all the forms of human life with the and of a Greek with the of a with the & of have not with how the of the in Jesus for a But this as the by to his be of in a letter or essay on the process of in have not of his life as a so that his words all & they to with all the and of the of a divine It is the same with and in a with have not of men to from the same that them so on a or of the of In him the the But this is in as will must do its own immortal friends, from only to when can do without But when can and from to do without them they will no I were to preach on this I would for a text the words of Jesus, I the is for that I for I the will not but I I will send him

Joshua A McGonagle Althoff

On the evening of January 1, 1776, Peeyankihšiaki (Piankashaw people) gathered in the village of Vincennes (in present-day Indiana), several miles above the confluence of the Embarras River and Waapaahšiki Siipiiwi (Wabash River). They came to celebrate the coming of a new year with the Francophone residents of Vincennes. On behalf of the British at this fur-trading post, French commandant Jean Baptiste Racine dit St. Marie recorded the evening's celebrations in his ledger of merchandise. St. Marie was most concerned with estimating the expense of gifts being distributed. Throughout the evening, he noted that eighty loaves of bread and twenty-five “carrots” of tobacco went to groups led by the akimaki (male civil leaders) Sakimia (Maringouin or Mosquito), Old Tobacco, and Young Tobacco. These akimaki were regular guests of St. Marie and leading families of Vincennes, and their company may have been a welcome reprieve to residents occupied with keeping warm. The evening's quaintness belied the fact that these leaders had gathered not two months earlier to negotiate a deal with an afterlife that would become the foundation of contemporary American Indian law in the United States.1

Paul J. Zwier

US states have been adopting a conservative approach to abortion that have far reaching percussions to women. By a conservative approach, I mean a legal framework ascribing personhood to a fetus from the moment of conception. Depending on the state it may mean that women are not able to get access, for example, to certain birth control which contain medicine that thins the wall of the uterus and so helps inhibit pregnancies from forming. In its most extreme some conservative legislation tries to restrict access to medical abortion prescriptions [1]. A conservative turn in the states, whether coming from the federal district court, a state’s court, or legislature, puts women who advocate for their right—some say their human right to control their own bodies in early pregnancy [2], to strategize about the best way to secure those rights. Setting aside self-help options for women seeking abortions, (moving to a state or going across state lines to states with clinics that will prescribe the medication,) the broader question for those seeking to allow for medical abortions in early pregnancy is how to change the law in the state. Is the best advocacy strategy through the courts, or whether it is better for them to use the political process to make their advocacy to the public generally? Should it seek to secure an even more explicit amendment to their state’s Constitution? At the heart of the strategy will be an important question: How best to persuade a court or body politic about the religious aspects of the question. Is the court or legislature or regulatory agency the best institution to be tasked with balancing deep intuitions about the sacredness of potential human life with shared goals of also protecting the health of women during their pregnancies? How can the discussion avoid polarization and demonizing that leads to political deadlock? Regarding the latter questions, some help may come from looking at the international history of jurisdictions with conservative approaches to abortion. Ireland, Poland, Mexico, and Argentina each have had their unique confrontations with more conservative legal-religious settings. All four share a religious Catholic majority in their citizens that needed (and in the case of Poland, still needs) to be addressed [3]. The “religious” setting in a particular US state will likely share some of the “Catholic” perspectives on when human life may begin, but will likely also have some significant differences, especially around the source of its religious authority for criminalizing abortion. On the other hand, a particular US state may share a more “pluralistic” perspective, which balances off strong nonrational religious views against religious freedom concerns of other faiths. As a result, important compromises in Ireland, Mexico and Argentina reveal the more irrational nature of approaches that try to deny abortions after conception, or even at heartbeat, on religious grounds. These jurisdictions then have composed compromises that still do reverence to later stages of fetal development but permit women to control their bodies during the first 12, and in the case of Argentina and Mexico, to 14 weeks. US states may do well to aim for a similar compromise. Ireland and Poland also have European legal settings that are both similar and different, that can help a state see what approach its state supreme court might take to the question of how its constitution will be interpreted. They share decisions from their Constitutional Tribunals that have marked conservative shifts toward giving personhood rights to fetuses in the midterm of pregnancy. They also share a legal umbrella, brought about by the fact they are members of the EU, and as member states have committed to a shared protections of human rights under the authority of the European Court of Human Rights (EHRC), they use the argument of “natural” law to ground rights of women to control early pregnancy. As a result, they present a contrasting legal setting that can amplify the legal setting a particular US state might find itself in. Mexico shares a more “federalist” structure of the US, but also has rejected a criminalizing approach in a particular state’s jurisdiction, that had criminalized abortions before 12 weeks. Mexico, then, shares many of the challenges that US states face, but has in principle, at least, set aside its previous religious based position criminalizing all abortions after conception. Briefly, the situation in each country is as follows: In Ireland, Irish progressives had tried in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to challenge the Irish Constitution. They lost in 2010 at the ECHR, and so turned to a national referendum to bring about change to its Constitution [4]. If progressives in US states adopt the approach that the Irish women did in 2018, they might take their case directly to the electorate and use state referendum provisions to amend the Constitution. An important feature of the Irish approach was that it then was forced politically to “trust” the Irish legislature to regulate abortion according to the majority will. They needed to present the case to the public generally, that “personhood” did not begin at conception. Having made that case to a majority of voters, they repealed a previously enacted 8th amendment to the Irish Constitution, declaring life beginning at conception, and were able to trust the Irish public health regulatory agency to enact health regulations that balanced the rights of women and the unborn. These regulations provide that Irish women have a right to choose during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy [5]. Thereafter, their rights are dependent on a woman’s ability to meet their burden of proof to health providers, regulated by the state, that they meet the exceptions provided by current Irish regulations, according to rape, incest, or, importantly, for health of the mother against the/right of the viable fetus [6]. In contrast to Ireland, in 2020, Polish women learned that their Constitutional Tribunal restricted their right to choose after years where abortion was widely available. The Tribunal found a right of the unborn not to be discriminated against based on “its” disability [7]. The Tribunal treated the fetus, even in early pregnancy, as a “person” for purposes of judging discrimination against it. That ruling has made a Polish right to choose virtually nonexistent, even when a woman’s life is at stake [8]. There seemed little appetite since then to challenge the holding by amending its Constitution. The history of abortion in Poland is made doubly political because of abortion having been linked in the mind of many Poles as being associated with Nazi concentration camps in Poland. It was also linked politically to “permissive” approaches to abortion backed by Soviet law pre-Polish independence. Add to that the Russia Ukraine war at its border, and some observers feel the time is not ripe to create political divisions on abortion rights in Poland [9]. There are also pragmatic worries about making the argument too political. They worry about how to amend the constitution in a way that won’t be interpreted by the Court in a manner that fails to be protective of their rights to control their own bodies. They are caught waiting on the ECHR to decide their case, and while their legal arguments might be strong, (the Court is more open to using Europe’s progressive morals as evidence of the existence of a human right), they are also subject to the court’s go-slow political reasoning when it comes to human rights. They also have brought the case as a class action, which may diminish the individual narratives of the women caught in the Polish legal trap. Those individual narratives demonstrate how protecting the fetus from disability discrimination requires medical providers to wait to determine the health of the fetus while risking the health of the mother. As a class it is harder to avoid the “self-help” possibilities available to women, generally, since abortion is so widely prevalent in other European states.

Mikołaj Barczentewicz

No abstract is available for this record.

Patrick Q. Mason

I was a high school senior in September 1993, when Lavina Fielding Anderson, Avraham Gileadi, Maxine Hanks, D. Michael Quinn, Paul Toscano, and Lynne Kanavel Whitesides were disfellowshipped or excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While these six people's lives were being upturned via Church discipline, the great drama in my life was spending too much money on the homecoming dance and then sulking that I didn't get asked to the next girls’ choice dance. My daily journal from the time, in which I painstakingly documented what I was learning in history, English, or calculus class on any given Tuesday, gives no intimation that I even heard about the excommunications. I was serving on seminary council and faithfully reading B. H. Roberts's History of the Church while some of the people whose works about Latter-day Saint history and theology I would read and admire only a few years later were being expelled from the LDS Church, if not necessarily the Mormon community. Despite my ignorance at the time, these events ended up having a profound effect on the trajectory of my life.I enrolled at Brigham Young University the following year, in fall 1994. No one in my social circles was talking about Mormon history, at least not in any academic sense. I don't recall any of my professors mentioning the September Six during my freshman year. The excommunications didn't really register for me until four years later, during my final year at BYU, when I took a course on Mormon history from David Whittaker, who was the curator of Mormon and Western Americana in the BYU library's special collections. It was my first exposure to scholarly Mormon history. Professor Whittaker talked about the September Six as the latest chapter in the long and complex relationship between the LDS Church and its intellectuals.That was the same year I applied to graduate school. I sought advice from several professors about my plan to pursue a PhD in American religious history. No one explicitly encouraged me to become a Mormon historian. Not Professor Whittaker—for whom I worked in special collections, who was one of my mentors, and who clearly thought highly of my abilities and potential. Not Richard Bushman, who was very gracious when I audaciously cold-called him. Maybe it was because they could tell I was interested in the broader American religious experience, not just Mormonism. Maybe it was because they believed—as I do—that it's important for students of Mormon history to also study other things. Or maybe it was because it was 1998, they had lived through 1993, and they were still nervous.From the perspective of institutional boundary maintenance, the September Six excommunications were a resounding success. The tactic worked, at least in the short to medium term. The show of force did exactly what it was supposed to. It made clear that Church leaders would not tolerate intellectual exploration that they perceived as challenging Church doctrine and what they deemed to be apostolic prerogatives. This wasn't about Church leadership feeling threatened by one individual or drawing the line on one issue, as we later saw in the high-profile excommunications of the 2010s (Kate Kelly and John Dehlin being the most prominent cases). It was a broadside, a frontal assault on the entire independent Mormon intellectual community. The fact that the six recipients of Church discipline were writing about different issues and occupied different positions across the ideological spectrum is precisely what made the excommunications so effective. The not-so-subtle message to the rest of the LDS scholarly community was clear: it could happen to you too.Part of the mythical power of Church discipline—the way that it intimidates those who are not directly affected by it—is the way that the decisions of Church leaders, working individually and together, are shrouded behind the veil of bureaucracy. Even three decades later, we don't know all the details about who directed these six cases to go forward all at the same time, or the degree of communication and coordination between General Authorities (which ones exactly?) and the various bishops and stake presidents on the ground. Boyd K. Packer's name frequently comes up, but the cast of characters was no doubt much larger. Their names and roles are largely anonymous, however, because they were acting in institutional roles that left no paper trail (or at least not a publicly available one). It's not really accurate to say that “the Church” excommunicated or disfellowshipped any of these six individuals; most Church members had no knowledge of these disciplinary actions. Though we frequently speak of it as such, “the Church” is not a historical agent. Collectivities (like “the Church”) neutralize the individual responsibility of any one person acting on behalf of the whole. Accountability is anonymized and diffused to the point that there is no longer any real accountability to speak of. And that allows collectivities—whether mobs, corporations, governments, or churches—to act with at least a certain amount of impunity.With all of this in the background, it makes sense that no one encouraged me to pursue a career in Mormon history. They didn't want to cheerlead me into a professional dead end or an antagonistic relationship with Church leadership. In the late 1990s, the prospect of ushering me, an eager and faithful young LDS undergraduate, to a doctoral program to study Mormon history would have seemed tantamount to pushing me out of the trenches and sending me across the demilitarized zone to a doomed fate on the other side. My professors had learned well the lessons of September 1993.But I hadn't. When I eventually learned about the excommunications, it seemed like ancient history—something that happened, like that homecoming dance, way back when I was in high school. Besides, the late 1990s were halcyon years for Mormons and Mormonism. The Church was the “fastest growing religion in the world”—at least, that's what we told ourselves, aided by sociologist Rodney Stark's grandiose projections.1 Anything that happened in 1993 was not just one but two Church presidents ago. The Church was in full Gordon B. Hinckley mode. No dour anti-communist, he. Instead, there he was smiling on national TV, matching Mike Wallace and Larry King stride for stride. What's more, the prophet was encouraging Church members to get all the education we could. Anti-intellectualism was a thing of the past!As I started graduate school, I had imbibed all of President Hinckley's ebullient optimism. I was living proof of Mormons’ newfound standing in the world. The Department of History at the University of Notre Dame was one of the best doctoral programs in the country for religious history, and it had admitted two—two!—Latter-day Saints. Yes, we were occasionally objectified, even exoticized; in almost every class session of a seminar we took with a distinguished Catholic historian, he gruffly asked, “What's the Mormon take on that?” But there we were, at the table! If any of my Catholic, evangelical, or secular colleagues and professors ever mentioned the September Six during those heady days, I don't recall.It was in the mid-2000s that it began to occur to me that perhaps 1993 was not so distant after all. I published my first article in Dialogue in the Spring 2004 issue. Two years later, I was invited to join the Dialogue Foundation's board of directors. I wanted to keep all my employment options open, so when I received the board's invitation, I called several people at BYU to ask if adding my name to the Dialogue masthead would be a problem were I to apply for a job in Provo. Most of them said that it was a new era—my board affiliation might get raised in an interview, but any concerns could easily be allayed once the interviewer heard me express my heartfelt commitment to the Church. Only one of my former professors cautioned me against joining the board, warning that any formal association with Dialogue would undermine an otherwise strong application to teach at BYU. I learned firsthand on two different occasions over the next few years that she was right.Fortunately, BYU wasn't my only professional option, as I found other good jobs to begin my academic career. Right as I was publishing my first book, The Mormon Menace, Claremont Graduate University opened a search for the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies. A chaired professorship in Mormon studies at a secular university was still a novelty. I decided, almost on a lark, to throw my hat in the ring. I knew I had no chance: I was thirty-four years old and had (barely) published one book. Endowed professorships are supposed to go to accomplished mid-career or senior scholars, people in their forties or fifties or sixties who have a long publication record and are recognized as leaders in their respective fields.The establishment of the Hunter Chair represented an opportunity to pass the torch to the next generation of Mormon studies scholars. But the handoff was a stretch. There was a pool of qualified candidates, but it was much smaller and more academically junior than it should have been. What explains the gap between Mormon history's founding generation and mine? No doubt there are multiple factors, but the fallout from 1993 must rank high on the list. The September Six excommunications resulted in a lost generation of Mormon intellectuals—smart, talented people who should have written books, led scholarly organizations like the Mormon History Association, and shaped both the academic field of Mormon studies and the broader public understanding of the religion.2 Latter-day Saints were primarily affected, but non-Latter-day Saint scholars also picked up on the cue that the Church wasn't enthusiastic about open inquiry into its past. A few Latter-day Saint intellectuals stuck with it, foremost among them Terryl Givens (interestingly, a literary scholar, not a historian). But there should have been an entire generation of Terryl Givenses.The Hunter Chair should have gone to a senior scholar. In fact, it had originally, with Richard Bushman coming out of retirement at Columbia University (where he held another endowed professorship) to get the endeavor off the ground. But when Bushman stepped down from the Hunter Chair in 2011, most members of the founding generation of New Mormon History were either at or near retirement age. Furthermore, many of that generation had spent their careers teaching at BYU or working in the Church History Department—neither of which was an especially attractive career profile for a secular university like Claremont. Philip Barlow would have been an excellent choice, but he had recently been hired as the inaugural holder of the Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University. There was another younger member of that generation who had published enough influential scholarship to be a potentially competitive candidate for the job. His name was D. Michael Quinn. Yet the principal donors to the Hunter Chair, who did not control the search but whose generous gifts creating the position afforded them some degree of influence with university administrators, made it clear that they did not consider an excommunicant to be an acceptable candidate for a position named after a Church president.3 September 1993 loomed large over Mormon studies, even at a secular university. The fact that a thirty-four-year-old with one book was hired for an endowed professorship at a highly regarded university can only be regarded as a fluke. The stars aligned in an unpredictable way that worked out splendidly for me, but only after many others had paid the price.Times change. Things did get better in the early 2000s. The archives started to open up again. The Church History Department started producing and supporting first-rate historical scholarship, most notably the Joseph Smith Papers and the research that culminated in Ronald Walker, Richard Turley, and Glen Leonard's masterpiece Massacre at Mountain Meadows. Latter-day Saint intellectuals found new confidence, and more non-Latter-day Saint scholars gravitated to the field. Mormon history has blossomed and expanded into the multidisciplinary field of Mormon studies. Social scientists, theologians, philosophers, literary scholars, scripture scholars, and others are all producing pathbreaking work. We are living in a golden age of Mormon studies. Tellingly, most of the work is being done by people who were either young enough, or started graduate school late enough, to have not been scared away by the events of September 1993.There are still whispers. Fear remains, even if we try to push it to the back of our minds. I am frequently asked, “Have you ever been called in by a General Authority for something you wrote or said?” The answer is yes, once. We spent a little over an hour together, enjoying a wonderful conversation that I genuinely cherish. He revealed himself to be a deep thinker and compassionate minister of the gospel. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't think of the September Six when I opened the letter and read this leader's “invitation” to meet with him in his office. When friends and colleagues publish or say things that push the envelope, I actively pray they will be met with the same generosity and understanding I experienced.4 There are no guarantees. Some of Joseph Smith's most poignant insights into the human condition came when he languished in Liberty Jail during the winter of 1838–39.5 In his masterful prison letter to the Saints, excerpted in Doctrine and Covenants section 121, he reflected on the nature of power in a fallen world. Power may be exercised in various ways. Too often it is used “to exercise control of dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men.” When this is the case, “the Spirit of the Lord is grieved.” In heaven's eyes, the unrepentant wielder of that kind of dominative, manipulative, compulsory power is in a posture of hostility or enmity not only toward other humans but also toward God. Alas, “sad experience” reveals that “almost all men” will “exercise unrighteous dominion” at some point.6 They may get what they want—God offers no promise to intervene in such cases—but this is not the order of heaven.The prophet's key insight comes next. “No power or influence can or ought to be maintained” unless it is predicated on the divine qualities of persuasion, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, pure knowledge, and most of all “love unfeigned.”7 This oft-quoted scripture is usually interpreted with an emphasis on the ought. That is to say, we ought to be kind and gentle and loving in our relationships with one another. But the statement is more radical than that. This passage is not simply about the way the universe should work; it tells us the way the universe does work. It is descriptive, in other words, not merely normative. The key words are can, only, and maintained. Certainly, it's nice when people are nice. But in a world of agentive souls, power and influence can only be maintained over the long term when assent is granted freely. Compulsion, dominion, and manipulation can and do work in the short term. People can be controlled or subdued with the use of intimidation, fear, and violence. But the human soul yearns for freedom and fulfillment. Any form of power based on compulsion rather than persuasion, intimidation rather than invitation, fear rather than love is therefore inherently limited—not just in its ethical value but in its efficacy.The September 1993 excommunications effectively and tragically cowed a generation of Latter-day Saint intellectuals. When institutions and individuals are threatened by new ideas, there is always a temptation to retrench. The blunt force of Church discipline worked in the short term. Even within a few years, however, its effect had diminished. Why? Because ideas cannot be quelched by fiat. And, more fundamentally, because “no power or influence can or ought to be maintained” by fear, dominion, intimidation, and compulsion. A new generation of intellectuals arose and carried the torch of inquiry forward.Churches thrive when they count their intellectuals as assets not liabilities, partners not villains. Will intellectuals think unruly thoughts? Yes, because it is the divine nature of the human mind to inquire, to explore, to expand. The pursuit of knowledge resists institutional correlation. If members or leaders of a group encounter thinking they deem to be dangerous, they are generally served best not by attempting to prevent or squelch that thinking but rather by providing better, more persuasive thinking. Numerous historical examples suggest that the compulsory silencing of ideas deemed “bad” is ultimately more dangerous than the ideas themselves. Churches, like governments, lose their authority precisely when they have no recourse other than mere authority. If Church leaders want to promote or discourage certain ideas, they have ample opportunity to use their power as teachers to persuade the Church membership of their position. Even in a digital age, it is the rare intellectual who can even approach the reach of the general conference pulpit and other modes of official Church communication.Thirty years later, we can be grateful that the collective excommunications of September 1993 proved to be an exception rather than the rule in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints's ongoing relationship with its intellectuals. We cannot change the past. But hopefully we can learn from and avoid the unnecessary tragedy of future lost generations.

Nathan B. Oman

Sealing rules, which govern wedding rituals in Latter-day Saint temples, constitute a hitherto unstudied religious law of marriage that has continued to evolve from the first introduction of sealing rituals in the 1840s to the present.1 This article provides an account of the development of contemporary sealing rules. That story begins in 1888. In that year Utah passed its first marriage statute, making marriage law in Mormon country essentially indistinguishable from the rest of the United States for the first time.2 Prior to 1888, for practical purposes, sealings simply were legal marriages, although after 1862 plural sealings violated the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act. During the territorial period, couples could dissolve their marriages by obtaining a “church divorce” in which the president of the church granted a divorce petition that was then memorialized using a preprinted contract of separation.3 Between 1888 and 1899, when the Utah Supreme Court declared that church divorces lacked any legal efficacy, the Latter-day Saints had to begin clearly differentiating the religious rules governing sealings from the secular legal rules governing marriage.4This process had two parts. First, the church had to adapt its marriage practices to a new secular regime that after 1890 it no longer sought to challenge. Second, it had to determine how its sealing practices would function in a world where sealings were no longer necessarily synonymous with legal marriages. This process was complicated by the practice of proxy sealings for deceased ancestors, which meant rules had to be promulgated for both the living and the dead. In addition, the abandonment of polygamy, which began in 1890, influenced sealing rules. In 1904, the church began moving decisively to impose monogamy as an internal ecclesiastical standard on Latter-day Saints, although it would take decades to expel internal dissidents who continued to practice polygamy. Despite these efforts, however, new sealing rules based on allegiance to plural marriage would be promulgated in the 1920s and 1930s. These rules were not a continuation of nineteenth-century practice; rather, they were an invention of the first part of the twentieth century. Later, those rules came under pressure from shifts in both theology and practice as Mormonism moved further and further away from nineteenth-century polygamy.It would be a mistake to imagine that sealing rules represent a simple working out of the implications of Mormon theology. First, Latter-day Saint theology has evolved over time, and often the rules reflect theological ambivalence rather than a single, well-worked out theological position. Second, the rules have been shaped by legal and institutional pressures. As is often the case in legal systems, Latter-day Saint sealing practices represent a layering of rules promulgated at different times in response to different concerns. Each new layer supplements and modifies the previous layer without repealing it. The result is a corpus juris that tries to respond to practical demands but is filled with tensions and inconsistencies.There are basically three strata of sealing rules that have survived into the present. The first layer was promulgated as part of the church's abandonment of plural marriage. These rules emphasize the centralization of sealing authority in the face of polygamist diehards, a desire to avoid conflict with secular marriage law, and a continuing commitment to polygamy in the hereafter. They were largely put in place by the 1930s.The second strata was promulgated in the second half of the twentieth century. These rules focus on posthumous sealings and were vital in facilitating temple worship as a regular and lifelong part of Latter-day Saint practice, something that began in earnest with the church's first international temples in the 1950s. These rules represent a liberalization of posthumous sealing practices and, at least for deceased persons, abandon the earlier rules’ implied commitment to polygamy in the eternities. The ironic result of this new layer of rules is that while modern sealing rules for living persons seem to have a strong implicit assumption of polygamy after death, sealing rules for dead people do not. This shift reflects the needs of mass temple worship and a waning theological commitment to plural marriage.Finally, there is a third strata laid down at the of the twentieth and of the that to the by the of divorce and making at the to the of earlier rules without The result is a of sealing rules that while to practical demands but which be a single, theological story of modern sealing rules begins with the of the legal regime governing marriage that the Latter-day Saints in territorial law, marriage is a of territorial law and is by a marriage have In the case of the Supreme Court declared that of an marriage was not and that of marriage was the of the marriage statute, that marriage be from of the in the and from which marriage be law the a of came to marriage simply a to be territorial the Latter-day Saints not to a marriage of any a in the of granted to the church by the first territorial simply that the church had the authority to marriage with the of which not be In Utah have been by a desire to of that to although of the church's Latter-day Saint to of marriages, and were a in the were to over the Saints, law was in Mormon and would not be a in the at which the marriage in the church's Utah law simply an of the marriage that had been in law in territorial there any a sealing and a legal marriage. legal purposes, sealings simply were marriages. were no legal as obtaining a marriage that were in the of its the Act. The law a marriage that was not with the In the Utah territorial a marriage in The law the of marriage marriages not by an which was to of the in regular with any religious could be after first obtaining a marriage from the and those the marriage had to a to the at the of the were those who marriages without a in of the with new legal sealings were no longer legal the Latter-day Saints in the they were in on divorce than they were in on marriage. In the Utah territorial a law on divorce In practice, however, Utah divorce was often than this The law granted over divorce to the in practice, couples often the church president for divorce rather than to in practice was in to where plural sought was to who to their In that those to divorce a to the to Latter-day Saints that a church divorce had of the legal of a divorce and the not as an ecclesiastical but as a The of was and the church preprinted Latter-day Saint divorce regime was in the legal into the twentieth century. In a in the of the to the of a Mormon on the that the divorce” from first was and the two had been the it as that the divorce” was but that after the first a law marriage came into the and second their marriage had been and The in over where who had church divorces their legal as The Utah Supreme Court in that divorces were which had the of who that they had been their of after 1888, it for the first to clearly sealing rules from secular The of was the in the development of these rules. the the to marriages in The of sealing authority in the of the and its was a that with an on new to be to dissolve the time, the church began rules for legal marriages that were not In Mormon in the Court were to people the temple as it would be to have the people by of In in response to in the declared that and could legal marriages of In and were with a to be in the the was to the of polygamist diehards, and and who were to The that the marriages by and were not the church to on temple sealings for the first The was that no living sealing to people in a where a marriage would be The church declared that be that the marriage the not be the have with the law in a from the the where the is into the twentieth church were that a temple sealing for a living not be in of a conflict with secular that sealing rules were than the secular law a temple sealing could not be for a it with the law of marriage in the where the temple was in the case of couples in marriage would be as in the where the temple was where a temple was that a a year after obtaining a divorce but persons to then a in after a divorce would have to a year in the under legal rules would as the marriage in The was to that couples simply be they were not to be in the in where the of a marriage was of this in in the in a of The legal marriage it for to who was in the of the In couples living as and have the of their their be by was however, and was after the moved to under its law by to their that the the in The church a of marriages law with the result that Latter-day Saint in different legal would be In a to the the a country in which law marriage is as and the from marriages are as the marriage under the in by the law of the without legal a living are not living in and be by the as This was to as in to a for where marriage without legal is to the of obtaining legal to to new legal and Latter-day Saint marriage law, the of modern sealing rules at the of the came in a of theological During the be theology sealing theology be clearly in the law of where sealings were to in with This modern Latter-day Saints of sealings in of using of marriage and their nineteenth-century in of and This for the of plural were to of these of the to although of these not have a with The were into without part of of these were when they were to on of out as of without part of of the were to while continuing to be to to be in theology of sealings was further complicated by the of posthumous sealings by These posthumous marriage sealings could marriages but not do was the of those for posthumous sealings were to be a be to a who was to be an In were often to a church sealings were a of that than of using marriage sealings with sealings to for of the proxy temple sealings the to Latter-day Saints who were to be to and while could be by proxy after the the Mormon of a were not they were into a by to a Latter-day Saint to a church theology into after when the law of the Latter-day Saints from this to their as as they and to be to their and to their and this as as president of the a of rules the new sealing the of these rules was the of rules declared of for the dead the of be As who as president of the in to a the of the who is a of the church is the Later, were to for that to in a Latter-day Saint As it these had the and to the sealing of in the from their however, was not to sealings The of the was to avoid proxy and to with the of theology sealings by a to living of had the of that and to persons their would be to of their that the in a of that and had a The of would result in who would then proxy sealings for ancestors, a posthumous sealing and that was a second to and had a second would in who would then proxy sealings for of ancestors, a posthumous sealing and the of temple and be of the as would be to both and The rules would the for to while at the of the twentieth posthumous sealing rules at least proxy sealings for both and theological of these sealings was the of as a the of marriages the was to with the sealing of from was In practice, of were often with Latter-day Saints proxy sealings for from they were not to the of both and proxy Latter-day Saints to that the sealings could be into a regime of polygamy, while the sealings were as a as to which of would have in the the of the twentieth sealing rules for living couples those for proxy This was not an but rather a continuation of nineteenth-century This be in the to second sealings after a first marriage in During the there was no the a church divorce and sealing the in polygamy no theological to a living to for a could be to without any church to dissolve the earlier divorce a for a second In that the church divorces granted marriage a than a of divorce a church to take a from a who is a and the of the a church divorce was a of an and practical as and sealings in living to two In an that the of a to in would be out by in the based on the of be in the of sealing rules with secular divorce the territorial period, couples could a divorce from secular by a petition in a were church to as part in a secular rather than an ecclesiastical These divorces marriages by a sealing and a of who were in a secular and then a second of that of the in a of sought a church divorce in to secular the secular divorce the for a second sealing without an by the president of the church to the previous was in in the church in the and to in was part of of the that their of the and that the out to those was in as a plural In and were in the in In for divorce from in the was a second as the plural of a who had been to is no of a church to both and the of the a new In to a that the sealing the authority to As marriage law in Utah in the people began the legal of church after 1890, however, the continued to with plural marriages. These couples could not of secular to the over and that after church divorces were to be they continued to be to the in secular legal rather than the of a previous marriage The shift in the of church divorces for who could of the secular legal new church divorces in these lacked legal was their In then a in the to an where the a divorce it the for and for the which the declared that church divorces lacked any legal efficacy, the continued to church which came to be as temple In addition, after the the law of in from people who had been to church under the previous regime and to be to by the sealings and temple to the of the previous shifts the that the president of the church could divorce” and by the decades of the twentieth the was to the of a previous sealing was not to for a second sealing after divorce a first of sealing was an for of In internal the with sealings for first in with the church but the second As the however, of sealings was in a that the continuing theological of plural marriage at the in practical the church was moving decisively to out polygamist in its in church began for and on sealing practices that over In the an and president of the was with to temple that temples, in with a from of how previous had been During this period, a new to have under which a could be to This in the for the first in but to have been in place at least a in a that when a who was the second marriage could be for This a shift to a under which a could be to In the church a new the to proxy sealing the it is to be to first the new however, it was for a living to be to the sealing rules in the living to be to two as sealings not to This when a was to a second after first marriage was by divorce These rules have the twentieth century. The result is that living Latter-day Saint are in to two living any to practice polygamy while would result in from the The modern sealing rules and nineteenth-century polygamy is by the of the rules. In to by the were not to be to a second without first obtaining a of the previous sealing from the president of the The result is that under the rules that have been in place the a living be to two at the when the church was making its to its sealing rules were in their commitment to a to a of a previous sealing in the however, the its to and the twentieth it living in to be to without first the previous This to have in the case of in church president the case of a who had been to first but not second a by church president the second the first to they had been were in the and who to be to a second In the second sealing was without the first As as the was with from to rules for living the practice of proxy temple meant that the church had to with rules for posthumous The of sealings was an in which Mormonism its to the was to living sealings after 1904, it had a posthumous In the decades after the couples who to be would to be as as of In was to have dead to while they are and after their As as to deceased with then living at as The of sealings for under the rules in the first half of the twentieth is not and the church and on the polygamist the of the and to polygamy their an its continued practice the church after sealing rules the of polygamy have been a of the they no as of in the and then in the twentieth with law to polygamist that the church would have its first the second of in sealing Prior to temples were in of Latter-day Saint and while there was a focus on the of temple regular temple worship was not an part of Latter-day Saint This with the of temple with the of the and church were where to the temple This shift a of the of posthumous sealings and an in proxy sealings there be for to do when they at temples to worship the church's on a of Latter-day Saints the of for temple in temple for a deceased who had been times temple were to to first were could determine which of the the would have to be to in often to in the case of deceased Latter-day Saints, and for Saints the was as people could have temple sealings in their of mass temple pressure on the the of deceased were to proxy to with the for temple temples were worship to and by temples had a of to for to The church in by the mass of from as from to and those to the This that temples would have a of for who to was no however, of that would be to their first and sealings by deceased were In this that the for living sealings for by then a to be to for proxy deceased were to be by proxy to of the to they had been while the not to deceased Latter-day Saint who had been while but could be to after and the church to something the that had in the twentieth without the of The by the process of which to for deceased the at temples, facilitating regular temple by Latter-day In when to clearly on polygamy of for the and to mass temple mass temple result was a marriage regime that the rules the living and the dead. for the living were based on a of that a to be to of the to had been after the marriages had in but a could be a second after the for a of the previous were granted to a second but in the of a petition by an it was for a to the of a sealing after a proxy however, the rules for and were and would be to of the to they had been while in those sealings could a of and in the that to any of the for living sealings put in place under has to the there has been a waning of theological commitment to the of continuing polygamy. As sealing theology came to be in the twentieth in for a marriage to be in the three be First, a sealing in by proxy be by the sealing Second, the the sealings in During the twentieth church in response to and by the continued of sealings to from they are that in the no be into a with the sealing be by the of This of the of sealings the of any the of sealings not any in the eternities. In addition, as the of nineteenth-century polygamy and the theological of its Latter-day Saints came to plural marriage as at a in than is not a but a The of the of the marriage to the and the to that be by a with a Latter-day Saint no for when on monogamy is the standard and polygamy is a is and to for their and which the of the church to the of of that the of as and and from the for to marriages that the standard of and the of marriage as the of are theological with modern sealing practices with the continuation of polygamy in the hereafter. plural sealing practices the church do not with nineteenth-century for plural marriage. on polygamy the of a first to a second marriage and, while often in practice, in this was the for sealings to the period, however, the church has not that a who to to a second were further theological in the of temple sealings that to a to sealings for Latter-day Saints of temple sealings as synonymous with the of marriages and often of two in a temple First, and are declared to be to for and second the are with and and and The of a sealing both the marriage and the of the church have been to sealings and those of sealings have not been as a of in of and of the church have been to temple of deceased persons than on the of polygamy, in church have the to temple sealings in of rather than in the eternities. In the church's who are but to the are often by the of the The sealing is not in the for a a those who their the by the This is the case the has from the marriage. a of sealings has been by the to the sealing are no longer in from the the church has the sealings for living but not for living of but different sealing rules for and on they are living dead when a the with living and a living who has been be to a deceased who has been to The rules in these an to the the living and posthumous sealing a deceased not be to of the to was while are a to be to a who to a previous a a and have the sealing on is not how the sealing rules for living and deceased be in the it a theological to polygamy rather than the of those in the church have in response to and do not to the of for then who was to a second in after in to the of the of sealings people who in the as that marriage be for then be in the when to than for have to that those and to the that the be in the church has to of the by the rules. The the has been a of church temple marriage. sealing rules to that petition the for a of sealing to a new In the church promulgated a that to petition the as a second time, although a of the previous sealing is not The sealing rules a regime of and while the earlier rules of when it to second could in two First, the could its sealings after could be granted as a of when sought by of there is the of in the temple for a of the rules is that it is for a to a of sealing to an than it is for a for it is but to a to be to a second sealings both and marriage for it that the would a a of sealing was granted as a of in of would and with the to be to a second but the second would be to the regime of posthumous sealings to living to the and sealings for living the church this then both and could be while living to sealings not to practice polygamy. This would be an of the regime of to rules. a however, would have its First, it would the theological the of This under posthumous sealing the of and is it is that a would to further emphasize the in which sealing practices and theology not with and the of but from and that Second, a living sealings by living could with this is for who have the in obtaining a of although it is by shift to a sealing for would place in an position. a would it that a of sealing could be would no longer be they are the case of a who to in the law has Latter-day Saint sealing practices in the twentieth century. This be in the of sealing rules to the in divorce Latter-day Saints had a legal something that was into temple which not rules for persons as the this as legal rules were and divorce In the church a that church who were to the temple without first obtaining from the that to the a divorce a of as the have been by an assumption that divorces by a least of the the came under First, the Latter-day Saint was and the no on the Second, with the of divorce in the the of divorce and it no longer a strong of of temple for was first to those who had been in the then to divorces and in the was to place where the of secular be is in the rules governing temple sealings after a marriage of the the twentieth church had a strong that be in the it was not to a marriage of the temple and then be church rules a on couples a marriage and their to be in the legal This first in Latter-day Saints to be in temples in the United States that the process of the of their marriage in was and the church its rules to Latter-day Saints to be in the temple after in and in the law that marriages be in a secular the world that have the law have rules. As the church after and after the of the in it that temple rules based on the legal that could a marriage the temple would not for temple sealings were in these In the was for the United marriage and sealing Latter-day Saints into with Latter-day Saint practice in law the there was no Utah marriage law and Latter-day Saint sealing be Latter-day Saints that sealings had that marriages not and marriages without sealings were under Utah law, sealings simply were marriages, and the of the it was that a church divorce was a legal that a legal marriage. 1888 this as marriage law and sealing rules came from secular marriage. the time, Latter-day Saint sealing theology a in when the of the law of which the abandonment of nineteenth-century theology. This is the from which the modern rules governing marriage sealings in the of of Latter-day Saints These rules constitute a ecclesiastical law of marriage for Latter-day Saints both living and dead. the of the twentieth those rules have evolved in the face of shifts in theological and the practical of modern The result is a of rules in which the living and the dead are to different of which rest on a theological the rules over time, with of with the while that the theological earlier rules that were This process has the church to adapt to of but the is not without and it is by no that it in the

Ari Helo

Thomas Jefferson’s fame as an advocate of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, equal rights of men, religious freedom, and democracy has been frequently questioned. For many scholars, his racist statements, his scant concern for women’s rights, his apparently unrealistic anti-slavery policies, and his anti-Federalist politics suffice as proof of the very opposite of his reputation. This article argues that politics can be viewed as the centerpiece of Jefferson's worldview, according to which all purposes needed to be brought into compliance, to the effect that one ended up with different politics for advocating democratic institutions, for progressive science, for personal self-development, and for socioeconomic issues, including slavery. The never-ending process of creating policies for bettering American society also gave politics its own character as a moral concept.

Chris Tilling

This essay critically assesses Seth Heringer’s important recent contribution to the debates surrounding theological accounts of history, as presented in his monograph Uniting History and Theology.1 His arguments arrive at a time when Christian theologians and biblical scholars are growing in confidence in their criticisms of the historical-critical method. For example, Francis Watson asks, “Does historical criticism exist as anything other than a rhetorical figure, useful for ideological purposes?”2 After all, some historical methods have been applied to reading Scripture for as long as the church has existed; it is the ideological narrative that has changed. Samuel Adams, in vigorous critique of the historical method of N. T. Wright, similarly concludes that Wright’s method cannot address its own subject matter, namely Christian origins and the question of God.3 But Heringer’s thesis is arguably the most theoretically rich of all recent works pertaining to the subject of history and theology, even if its theological argument is less developed than that of Adams.4 For this reason, it deserves sustained analysis of its primary contributions. Heringer’s argument unfolds in four chapters: (1) “Revisiting German Historicism” (1–41); (2) “Christian Reflection in the Shadow of Ranke” (43–104); (3) “The Construction of History” (105–75); and (4) “The Theological Interpretation of History” (177–219). This review will be structured according to these four parts before finishing with a critical assessment.In his first chapter, Heringer argues that German historicism,5 as appropriated in biblical studies, is synonymous only with a particular reading of Leopold von Ranke and Ernst Troeltsch. It is a flat reading that has incorporated only naturalism and “scientific objectivity” into its procedure. On the contrary, the historicists themselves reflected an idealism that could include such notions as art, aesthetics, poetry, and, yes, theology. Precisely these, however, have been stripped out in biblical scholarship. It follows that “Christian historiography needs to revisit its intellectual heritage and reengage these German thinkers” (1).Heringer proceeds with an account of Troeltsch that includes a few surprises for those only acquainted with secondary literature (2–6, 19–28). Troeltsch divided the supernatural from the natural, yes, but he believed both of them to be necessary. Indeed, this dualism ran deep in Troeltsch’s work such that Heringer, with Toshimasa Yasukata,6 maintains that his “life’s work was an attempt to combine his religious convictions and the contemporary intellectual world” (3).Heringer documents his case with care for biblical scholarship tends to assume Troeltsch is best credited for the three principles of criticism, analogy, and correlation. But Troeltsch’s grasp of the relationship between theology and history is more nuanced. He critiqued Heilsgeschichte for being inconsistent, for example. It wants to use the historical method (including correlation, analogy, etc.) but only selectively. The method is incongruently abandoned when the historical conclusions appear uncomfortable. Troeltsch’s work is an attempt to reconcile the uniqueness of Jesus Christ with his principles of historical criticism in a manner which avoids the weaknesses of Heilsgeschichte.Even more important and misunderstood is the figure of “wie es eigentlich gewesen ist” fame, Leopold Ranke (as discussed in 9–19). Heringer insists that Ranke is neither the founder of historical-critical method nor, following F.C. Beiser, the “archetype of positivist historiography” (11).7 Similar to Troeltsch, Ranke attempted to “synthesize two different interests: science and art” (11). The latter (art) is the historical pursuit of underlying causes, the spirit of history. Ranke wanted to remove bias or prejudice from historical work. Hence he proffers rules, for example, for distinguishing between good and bad sources. But he also wants art to play a significant role in his work, for “history is not merely analytical but also creative” (15). Further, because art reveals and is elevated by facts, art and history must go together. “Art,” Beiser argued, reflects Ranke’s idealism; he wanted an underlying order that unifies and brings morality to bear upon history, something he can even occasionally name “God” (16–17).These insights allow Heringer to demonstrate the substance of the mature Troeltsch’s historical theory. Following Ranke, he recognized that “unfettered science could lead the world into materialism and naturalism; unfettered historicism to anarchy and skepticism.” Hence, “his main concern [was] to find normative ethical principles in the flux of history,” to “discover why historicism does not necessarily lead to the relativizing of all knowledge” (19). While Troeltsch didn’t give theology voice in this, he realized that there was more to history than matter and causation. Both Ranke and Troeltsch, then, mobilize two tendencies. One involved “objective,” source-critical historical work. The other pointed to idealism’s desire to find an underlying unity or coherence in history.But this is not how biblical historical-critical scholarship has read the historicist tradition! Heikki Räisänen, to take a prominent example, adopts only one aspect of the German tradition, and thereby distorts it.8 Räisänen split history and theology, which Ranke and Troeltsch were keen to think together. Heringer thus presents a case in direct contrast to Räisänen. He will seek to show how the aspect of historicism that sought to join history and religion has a brighter future, and that Christian theology has resources to aid this reconciliation with these often hidden aspects of German historicism.Heringer’s opening chapter is a little muddled in terms of structure. It begins with Troeltsch, despite the fact that he follows Ranke, then offers an aside, then addresses Ranke before returning again to Troeltsch. Some may also question whether the chapter is strictly necessary to the developing argument. After all, so what if some have only developed part of the earliest historicist tradition? Methodological naturalism has its own justifications. A more charitable reading of Heringer, however, notes that some key claims have been advanced upon which the second chapter will build.The second chapter offers exacting and devastating criticisms of modern Christian historical work. It maintains that modern Christian scholarship either abandons history, or theology, or consistency, a fact which points back to the concerns of Troeltsch in ch. 1. To structure this chapter, Heringer presents a summary of Hans Frei’s The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, particularly Frei’s typology.9Frei argued that the premodern unity, in which the world was understood by means of Scripture, was fractured by the arrival of historical criticism. Figural interpretation was summarily rejected, leading to a disjunction between the narrative of Scripture and the “real world.” What followed this rupture is the point of Frei’s fourfold typology. He distinguishes die Sache approaches (of both ostensive and non-ostensive varieties) from “grammatical interpretation.” Frei’s move was to point beyond historical referents and die Sache to “the cumulative narrative of the text and the world it projects” (51). But Heringer rightly asks whether Frei’s approach is a reaction to the worry that the narratives of Scripture are not historical. It is thereby determined by this fear, offering safe haven on the shores of narrative. Following Frei, readers do not need to ask whether the narrative “really happened” or not (52). So Frei’s project fails, but the terms of his typology remain helpful. he as and and N. T. as approach is but to be is how he the historicist of when it to He does this because he is to the that Jesus is Hence, historical-critical work cannot the to the best it an account of the of But this was and them the the of thus pointed to the which and thus beyond history offering by of critical on Heringer is more in his account of and Wright, to which in contrast to “Christian is from first to a historical is direct but the historical-critical method is the which theology must it were theology not be in in in history. Further, as all of history, for is that must be understood the of history,” both and, the is to the future, and this Jesus into the of history by being This is not a for for all such religious claims must have in and must be historical-critical work by means of analysis of a historical and the of the It follows that of so to are the of Heringer how show in when the historical-critical method theological claims will not Troeltsch, the historical method is to the He thereby the of analogy, as as Troeltsch’s of correlation, all for theological by But this means that what is in the world are to his his to a account of theological other historical-critical work is one of his own not a or argues for two He claims to a theology which can be by historical-critical but he also this critical work as theological in its account of in N. T. Wright’s beyond with a on the of and in Wright’s to this move is a particular account of which to the of as as of the This to only “the of or between the and the It a out of all or are and with other those and to Wright’s project for it to a to theology and history. After all, has to do with it is in history that find what is normative for Christian But historical work needs theology as an in the that to this is Wright’s that history both and is best in which Heringer to that that historical will the It follows that the of history is not to a and narrative but to show that the narrative is the as the one that has in history all This is a by Wright’s which account not only of the but also of the and It to his for between historical in the such as of of and this Heringer first argues that how his method for the best historical is by a a fact that claims to historical work that can be what to of Wright’s that all of the needs to into historical After all, what the on the for example, a to or is the merely the that Jesus on will this is all can upon to the of The to the of Wright’s thesis merely from narrative accounts of the to the of the involved when what a why these and not for Wright’s historical theory. But Wright’s historical different Heringer points to the when claims his is less by than other are particularly so Heringer reflects upon Wright’s account of the as a it that the historical-critical method cannot the as for an to as one is not Wright, of this but he does the terms of historical-critical the role of and the that the presented methods are this Heringer argues that Wright’s the involved in his own by not but the the and the of historical It is for this that can that his account of the is the best of the for to at the a can only if have on how are or is thus in the of his own it in one insists that are but then other scholars for how their bias Heringer asks, that he has his own than the fact that Heringer is to Wright’s method and it the most to the historical-critical methods on theology, it when it that can that a in history, and the of the historical-critical method with a supernatural as an to two On the one both and in different abandoned history to theological with a on or the on the other both and believed theology and history could be by developing and historical critical For this involved on the of For it involved analysis of But both believed that the historical was to history it by methods in order to and historical both at this Heringer will show that this of the one narrative account in historical to account for modern historical which to his chapter presents an analysis of the relationship between and narratives in contemporary or criticisms of the Heringer and to Heringer notes a devastating of the coherence of the asks what the of history The the of the their and an of their But when the has been are After all, “the an can only be and only long the is which means that the its of the by the necessary to The to use Heringer’s example, could not that for this which is not in the Hence, it could not historical such as the or the It follows that “the for of that at a by its to in narrative something which needs the by What is because these narrative exist in history, are not part of the that at a these narratives are not to the The thus wants to on narratives that these narratives are not in the the is Heringer argues that is in its to objectivity” He on that which is in historical to history from It is a remove themselves from the to allow history to But of these for history so and give to history. these upon historical It as that is an ideological it is not and was of to the with the work to show that the cannot how and narratives are as have to “the to them being and so of historical narrative is also to a and This reflects an in the work that the to The point of it is to the that “history is not or but the use of and not exist in are to history by Heringer, thesis the between history and theology the in such a that what is at It is not a between history and it can be one between different of the different and this brings to the of Heringer’s that the is not a in which the Christian can be Christian theologians an to that of historiography” a Heringer will with theological in his chapter, he notes how works with two of a and of The latter the by it to This a of are in terms of how be as a are that have are not part of “the world” and narratives are of and which are to but But and this is not exist in are are as as a to which and This is the which beyond it follows from this account that historical do not the historical narratives that can be Hence, or need to be on other notes and the of The for Heringer, is that what the as the the of the as more their is more than the Heringer’s this means that is not the only deep and so on all It also means that can be in Indeed, this is what historical work do not need to a and following it also means that to out the or even cannot be presented as or are themselves on and this chapter by the work of to he that such a role in historical Precisely this Heringer is most for Christian in historical to move beyond is not a narrative He also that narrative in the are not his narratives and more subject and in It to back to give to the and not to But this is with his of and to some such that there is a between and But this does not that is a of Heringer that for are often than what this important to for do more than aspects of their to It can do this because is the or its to in terms of its as the of a so that it following the this is not to be understood in terms of or particularly “the and of the is the of claims and a to the with For there is of subject and and remain It is the of the can in a particular namely in that of which to the the For it follows that the subject in this by in so is what is from the One again in a The is a returning to that beyond the and of the of the One into The of to some is that historiography as in its of the and It is there that historical is chapter Heringer’s of the claims of historical-critical It cannot a for to take with this of is the of the thus But is this what does he in its What does a Christian theology of history and theology To these Heringer presents in his argument has been a of the that the of these ideological Heringer for a Christian of history from a approaches to history are so Heringer presents one with an Christian Heringer claims that his will from and and back in such a that avoids Frei’s of history. After all, claims in their theological as History and happened” these what a Christian account of history Heringer to a first thesis is that history has two On the one history is but it is also to a History merely with the idealism in German principles and have long that this be the of from a point Heringer with to such as and The is that to the world as one This Heringer to that must be involved in the necessary of This was key in of the The read Scripture so and then these parts into a narrative that not with the “Christian a for the and of namely the of Jesus Christ is the of Scripture, the parts and the of the these claims Heringer the of the It follows that a Christian of history the of are the of that and all of which the of history, with a Christian second thesis the of and historical work and for the that in the world.” What is it is to something one is not contrast to scholarship in the second chapter, as as other such as and Heringer that cannot be is with a Christian of It is because it for and by which historiography can be But this is not second thesis thus follows from the history both and history cannot be the between are by cannot this, bias is into the structure of history is in for So he insists that if were to that the world back on have to this and to how it does Further, do not exist in the for are the of not exist in To these claims will have to thesis of “the of and the method can only and with the Christian has to So for the when the between and Christ in and are an underlying which something can be in the of the even if not part of Troeltsch a play between parts and the which is to that of the on the the It follows that all historical method is this, Christian theology has resources to there are between the and future, a matter which Heringer at in his on on Heringer a case for historical work that and in by which thereby accounts for history all between and future, in that move beyond history the of thesis upon some of his particularly Heringer to and work to the of the in history, a in the of this, historical be by theological aesthetics, for historical can be by how and in with the Christian can be by how point to and Heringer a Christian account of history. This does not that history as He is not a theological of “the world” and of the Christian tradition, are and the But he does a history by which means in the historical-critical method cannot So the of in of between the and the of in point in one a “Christian is for the historical has presented an and It can only be that his work and in It offers an argument that brings theology if less than historical and contemporary biblical scholarship in What is it his for how to demonstrate the of in the and He rightly the Christian to beyond and then offers for can only that Heringer will more for the and in Heringer’s case Wright’s project So the has not been even in terms of Wright, but Heringer’s will be even the of Wright’s This is an important work. Hence, a few of more substance need to be it can be whether Heringer’s project is upon a namely which is a of the This his conclusions are are with an But it can be that his argument is To the that Heringer argues that all are his can be is the to which he does not an argument for the of his own What is there is some how Heringer the arguments the historical as of the of this could be with to works on the of the role of But is that this was not were not and following from this, it could be that his argument was by It is a than a rhetorical for his own But the of this the Indeed, this concern with his to The argument of the chapter a of by means of an of But this may be a to with the so to may be that to is only a rhetorical as Heringer wants to Christian the chapter Heringer that history the for have to do with Christian But if that is the on what can his claims be What is the theological of his is the case merely an of a But this not a case for his own one on theological So assume that of is for the of his argument which on even if Heringer is not a to be is that some will that the case is After all, does it Heringer’s merely to the of the of the his claims be understood by those with different and if on what such a be in of the terms of his own an account of the of his own his argument may be theologians may have other concerns But of theological at this the claims the of particular arguments could be out with theological Indeed, Heringer is read with both and Samuel in this this points to a concern the of theological in the thesis as a After all, theology may to to by developing in the of it may to an or are between these of theological and it is not Heringer in this A little more theological and analysis have Heringer’s This also have Heringer’s in other To be is Heringer’s to read history in terms of the “the Christian “the Christian to be and more in to some of his has Heringer of with those the is the of his argument to a that some of To the that it does is the thereby there is why the church cannot be by its own claims with but a little more on this be helpful. Heringer could arguably to biblical theology at this point as an of historical work that to be upon a Christian account of history. Indeed, with may have his what can Heringer to for in the of the to as a It need not be stripped of the of which is the Heringer to the of The or in which can can be by the to which it “the of a and and of it can be presented as which is not as both and and and It on the of and insists that the to be the world Christ it of to which the church can Precisely so it is a in which the church can of in to the work of Christ and the Heringer may and that his project to as it from such order to the Christian in the Christian But what was was an account of the of Christian and in the The of Heringer’s thesis little by of for such a and are in a one also question the in in Heringer’s argument. are that not exist in or in that are not part of “the world.” this that for Heringer, the of to be to the a This at for Heringer, do not exist in history. But this has its of After all, and all have This is why one can be in that the does exist history,” A little more care with some of the of and be and on the to more One to ask whether Heringer’s argument that all historical claims are are some to why a of a A will occasionally an argument that does little more than a bias theological such as part of the the to to their own to the to which it has their arguments and their to from different But is not this to the in his Heringer does not to this, but the to which he does not needs to be Indeed, Heringer will point to a of such as in his first thesis in chapter whether something points to But a little more on this in from his argument. After all, the of is thus as Heringer’s argument is that cannot and not be But it on what is by and what is by in this After all, the of some be as the of Christian to be Indeed, all of the points do not to be of Heringer’s as as a for for some and could also be For example, is a between Ranke and What is the relationship in Heringer’s argument between idealism and the and of the Frei’s typology the for his argument in the second But most significant is what his thesis for historical and work Heringer has with a few But the of this work as as the that some of and and the need to these insights beyond can only that Heringer a second a to that however, this monograph is a

Lluís Pérez-Lozano

Like most theories of democracy, democratic republicanism has usually taken for granted who the demos is. However, precisely one of the most frequent sources of political conflicts in contemporary history is the determination of its boundaries, particularly –though not only– in secession conflicts. This article aims to answer a related question: what kind of right to secede from a modern democratic state,1 if any, can be acknowledged from a democratic republican viewpoint? By answering this question, I hope to make a contribution both to republican literature (in which secession has barely been analyzed) and also to the normative literature on secession (in which republicanism has very rarely been used as a normative framework). The core tenet of the republican theory of secession developed here is the recognition of a non-unilateral2 right of secession for any democratic secessionist community within a democratic state, coupled symmetrically with a non-unilateral right to territorial unity for that democratic host state. The rationale behind this theory is to deny both sides the power to impose their will without having to consider the interests and opinions of the other side; that is, to deny arbitrary power, which in republican terms is synonymous with domination. As we will see, this in turn minimizes the chances of permanent majorities and powerful minorities achieving arbitrary power in center-periphery conflicts. This article does not discuss secession as a general phenomenon, but focuses particularly on secession conflicts where both secessionists and the host state (and the unionists within it) are peaceful3 and democratic. The rationale behind this analytical choice is to minimize what we might call normative noise, i.e., normative issues that distract our attention from the ones that we initially intended to discuss. Modern democracies, however imperfect they may be, are the closest polities to democratic republican ideals that exist in our contemporary world. Thus, when neither the host state nor the potentially seceding territory are attempting to move away from this political model in a non-democratic direction, secession appears normatively “naked” in democratic-republican terms. I am not trying to find out whether democratic secessionists are legitimated in seceding from undemocratic states, nor whether democratic states are legitimated in suppressing an undemocratic secessionist attempt. The article presents this theory over eight sections: (1) a review of current theories of right of secession, pointing out why republicanism can be a useful framework to overcome their weaknesses; (2) an overview of the main tenets of republicanism, explaining why (and how) republicanism must analyze secession conflicts as a type of factional conflicts; (3) the presentation of the normative core of my republican theory of secession, based on non-unilateralism; (4) the outline of a non-unilateralist framework for secession conflicts; (5) an outline of three problematic scenarios for the theory, and of the role that unilateral mechanisms can play in order to tackle one of them; (6) an exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of two possible institutional translations of this theory (constitutionalization and internationalization); (7) a discussion of some foreseeable criticisms of the theory; and (8) a summary of my conclusions. For the purposes of this article, a secessionist movement is a group of people that seek secession for a broader group of people, namely the target group. When secessionists are a clear majority within the target this group as a secessionist of a secessionist movement is this is not of secessionist when a secessionist community to a modern democratic state as a democratic secessionist secession is as of for of of right of secession are usually three on who they to i.e., i.e., that are and the state, particularly not in terms of i.e., The two of secession as a i.e., a right to which some of people are a with to their the the of which are to this right are usually as an (1) i.e., to and to (2) the i.e., the of minorities the power to the can be (3) its is to an of the that a group of people must in order to be a and (4) the of who in the territory of the group that is to secession, but who not its might to be as and be from the on secession, from to some of which secession as a in the of are is a of but on some as of However, theories been as the they the of current and the of on This is problematic most are the of that are from the democratic that theories an answer to this as as states are are However, in a of states, minorities and are of permanent which are usually the sides in on issues related to state the territorial of political to that they must this of a in the for Thus, that current are in some for unionists I that the behind this is that current an a in secession that is to the territory make this choice of a of as as a state is secession is and and on the other make the choice of theories of that are not based not based on order to their I this is to and is of what be political the that is, what the of political and is of who make the political and that to this of and they this the as a of I that when we political and two the people who we to we their of may not be the people who we consider legitimated to For we may a of to the we can a with a as as as has power we as and I the is to as an of the is to As we a the of and who are to and for the who are are to from that However, the with a and is that political conflicts to to very and on the of when our interests are This is, one of the main why we and that we to that is, in the and if we that the who is who has the on is the who we will be in and not the This is why political and that to and make in a that can be as who that and are other political and in order to political conflicts of in a I that and are right not to a and secessionist The is that they the of over the my the is the of the of is When the and in the on the of who is the to power in polities a of and to tackle political conflicts without to a is not a to the might does make This is the of that the of of in is also the of most secession conflicts. For who is right in secession a and be a theory that out a institutional framework for secession conflicts. to be a theory that be within a turn that is in the an a of a unilateral right to secession, are and mechanisms which secession conflicts be this who a very and I will that democratic republicanism can for a This article is based on the contemporary of the republican developed on the of this is the in current republican to this (1) for as (2) as the arbitrary power of the group over the group i.e., as a power that can be over without having to consider interests and opinions (3) in order to republican sources of power must be and the (4) in order to the state from a must be as a with its and in and the of and (5) that and are democratic as to (6) for republican to as people as possible Thus, and as are the main of democratic in this republicanism as to but a is, a of political on as as on not in the of but also in that of this a in republican is the (and the of factional conflicts when to political political political conflicts in a that can power over the The of power is not to but also to the of a factional also this of power to has not with that are to secession in which the neither seek to power within a state, nor to power for a state, but to a state out of one to group with an to republicanism, as not used republican and in their on secession when on secession from a republican of they in a usually as a within broader on as the republicanism and but on on has some of potentially secessionist in one Thus, is to be in a democratic republican my as I a secession can be as a of factional is usually the of a a permanent majority and a permanent both of the of permanent on the state be and in terms of its territorial territory the territorial of political and this a secession may in democratic republican terms. The one is the of i.e., the that some people who be the of the seceding may be from on the of secession, from of the This in my is one of the of if the group with a right to secede is one who not may be from the of on in they may be from of the state, they are not of The is in the of of achieving unilateral secession an which to be particularly powerful of its be in a to the of the of the with to consider interests and opinions arbitrary power over This is a that but for they are of people seceding two of and republican to I as to a that of arbitrary permanent that secessionists must the of the to permanent who may what of they will to permanent This a may be with the the of a democratic For a to the republican of its its be in a to to the interests and opinions of the is a (and a be the democratic republicanism majority The of (in democratic republican is not to but to to in to be to people and majorities Thus, in a democracy, we can to be in a majority and in a for I am a I will be a in a and I will be a if I am a This of majorities majority the imperfect to to the interests and opinions of However, in center-periphery conflicts and the majorities is to the without for the interests and opinions of permanent if their are with democratic For a permanent majority can the of but democratic to the of the of a permanent from This does not that they will but that they are to in republican this is a i.e., a of arbitrary are two that been developed in order to overcome this arbitrary permanent (1) the of of and (2) the within the of for secession, of of recognition However, neither of the of arbitrary permanent both are is that the host state must of center-periphery without that the of a for a center-periphery is precisely the very of that this is a that can be on a in the in the will usually be the permanent both the they are trying to that the of to the to permanent majorities permanent make to their one of the two of is to be the other to the for democratic republican i.e., of secession conflicts not is to domination. I developed this republican of current my in order to overcome democratic republicanism a based on a non-unilateralist I will the to this I that a democratic republican non-unilateral without unilateral This non-unilateralist is both secessionists and the host state to their the to the interests and opinions of the other which is to permanent majorities and permanent in center-periphery to interests and opinions can this in the of and in the and the The out two in the secession the right to unilateral secession, within the but the acknowledged that the the to with a secessionist in if a clear majority of to a clear The both the and the and the of the to in can why a question: what if the not to in the of a that the secession of been in terms. However, this is not the the that they not to within the will of but to the of unilateral secession what the the secessionists who initially been for the to a role in the I may be to to the I may be the of without with in any of my may that my is of a and may that I am to be to away with I in the to its without the interests and of the other the the chances of in both that this in this appears to be and to both be for of to with as a and in the of both this be a in terms of political and is out in the aims to of in order to of aims to political conflicts an institutional framework in which (1) a and are from and (2) as a of the political to away from Thus, republican and political in secession conflicts within modern democracies, this be in my a framework in a non-unilateralist to that of the the I outline what this framework my a democratic republican framework for secession conflicts be based on three (1) a non-unilateral of secession for any democratic secessionist coupled with a non-unilateral right to territorial unity for its democratic host (2) a unilateral right of secession for in which democratic secessionist are with an and (3) a unilateral right to territorial unity for in which democratic host states are with an secessionist The of three the of a non-unilateral framework to secession which the in the (1) a democratic the of the secessionist target with a clear secession, in order to find out whether they are a secessionist and (2) in the of a clear a in the host state and the secessionist this framework the secessionist community the right to secession, also the host state the right to its territorial Thus, the will both and normative will find out whether the target group is a secessionist and will (1) a for its to secession, in with the host state, and (2) an for the host state to with in this the of who a and the framework as a we will to that in For in order to a of this non-unilateral right of secession we must discuss the what is a clear can a be what is a clear and a in unionists and secessionists the the on secession must be in is not a for will be to that the in the the in the the be and the majority be clear in order to make that we are a secessionist The of the has to with in order for to be a the of the majority has to with in order to that we are with a democratic secessionist The of the has two territorial territory is potentially seceding in of a and in the the territorial I is to secessionists the territory that will potentially where the be This a must be based on a that This has some problematic that I will discuss in for that in the territory out secessionists for a a The not be the for the of a on the of a state, the of democratic republicanism a the right of who be the of that state to this in that without other possible on the the of the majority the what and for the is in order to consider that has been a clear secessionist my this is However, I that we can two the the the of the target group as a political the the the and the target group is, the the to two the for a in and in the of and be in The rationale behind is that in secessionist are as an (1) based on in can be to play a role in in and (2) the of minorities can be particularly in of two can be within one in a secession the the secessionist target group can be a people (in terms of and the the for a clear I call this the people This might to that my to secession is based that is not one and on what a is. However, this is not the current the people is not based on a of what a is as a of aims to an that in as a of the of a and of what is, is to be of the of a from a of the of a to a state. The people does not deny a to secession, but for of the and of their secessionist is who be to call the my be an democratic that the target this is the in target as within modern democratic However, this will not be the the target group may to a state. that the host state has for the target group with some kind of in order to call a secession if secessionists clear democratic in order to call the this of that they be a clear majority in the they also an of over that we can be that has a its this be in with the people that a secession has been in a that has been in with the I and that has in a clear this not to any the target group be to arbitrary permanent that on the other to to unilateral secession, this make the host state to this in order to both both sides an to in I we can state that two in when both their the and trying to in a For if the potentially seceding territory a that to be for the host neither over the a they seek some kind of in order to an in and from the The that a a secession is a arbitrary permanent the other the that a in a is a does not make to the host state with secession in order to if the to secession is a with that host state. However, an this institutional framework has the secession and its also the of a secession and the a The here is the host state this two (1) to the terms of and (2) to and a unity that is to the secessionist within the host state, that to be secessionist in the the the in the we a my this we the the secessionist non-unilateral right of secession, on the one and on the the host non-unilateral right to territorial to the this both to their and the their the host state the this will that to make a for territorial unity this is the of a in which the host state and the secessionist with neither particularly are both very to their to this be to an to this with other democratic in order to For if the host state in for the and neither the secessionist are to nor the host state to (and a be in the secessionist in this be to whether they secession if they what the host state is The if is very be taken in order to a The and the secessionist community to in its for secession, the be for the host state to but to a also a question: the secessionist that has the the power to call my secessionists to call as as they they will the host state the of a on the will the secessionist target group the of arbitrary permanent Thus, in with this theory to secessionist to call for a a but a The of this to be the of an and be the that can their For the of we that when this general is to if to the might three problematic (1) one of the territory secessionists as potentially seceding is not of the political in which the secessionist movement the democratic power to call for a in the of an secession in the (2) one of the territory secessionists as potentially seceding is, in a majority of people who secession the of and (3) one of the two of the this non-unilateralist the I be not to the territory in the secession the of that territory to be democratic The can be I the very of non-unilateral The of this to this be on the democratic republican that its to the secession However, I that we must this two a majority of the to secede from the broader a majority of the to secede from the broader territory if the broader territory to secede from the host state. I the for a majority be in the in the The rationale behind this is the people an will that is of the secession of the broader territory a on the of the as a people if they to in the of the broader territory seceding from the host state. the that one of the two is attempting to impose its the of the democratic host state, I that this is (1) secession a of of minorities the potentially seceding territory (2) the target group be, any a secessionist i.e., of a (3) the secessionists are attempting to secede in the unilateral secession a democratic secessionist community be (1) is the host state (in the (2) the host state is a (3) the host state is to its territorial unity and a secession in the Thus, the for having a right to be for both they this right if the to be be that this non-unilateralist when to to out but a (1) on the we other the secessionist (2) what be the for a clear (3) in the of a clear can be whether the host state and the secessionist community are in (4) can be whether the host state the secessionist community are any of the scenarios that The to be Thus, we to who answer i.e., who be the of the and what and political framework that are two possible of (1) and (2) the is usually that and secession are synonymous the of a right of secession has the attention of to to but of the has been out from the of of democratic The of this right that the of this non-unilateralist framework be a the in state, with the of i.e., the host state its its on the my this a a right of secession, in terms of and will be the that the of will be, in the one of the to the host that is, a power to one of the does not that this power will be to be the but in terms of this However, the of and secession, in the is I is a possible institutional of this republican its non-unilateralist be taken within the a of and to democratic states, as as and democratic secessionist to This outline an institutional framework for a non-unilateralist of secession political conflicts. the in this framework be a the with the of the the of this non-unilateralist framework within the a This be in with the in their to current republican within usually for a (1) democratic and (2) the of and and the of a state the to this and a state. to an is to and of of and two The of republican in the that of the to republican and a of republican the they are two that republican for a (1) the of and (2) that is not to a state. However, has been on the of the of the republican who with secession, an for the to be the is states, be in the we an to be a is that is not a is states, the in one secession are not states one secessionist but one state one secessionist to that an be to be an as the host state. a the be to that the of of is that they are the states that are to be they are usually a of one state that an institutional of this republican be an framework to secession conflicts. if the be problematic of the of a the be problematic is states, democratic to be of their over their the when they in their with secessionist in the the most for the of this republican (1) to as democratic as possible state and of the of this non-unilateralist to secession that they to when secessionist and (2) to for the of this both in as as in when and where I that main criticisms can be this democratic republican republican and two The republican be a to as an factional not be for a democracy, the to a right of if majority are a in the host state, this is they a factional my factional does not nor is that is the other an institutional that factional arbitrary power in will to discuss and other The republican namely that of of that republicanism to to in of the This can from a with the political secession can this and a republican secession in very As in the I this one and secession conflicts precisely when this kind of is people to a state does not in any that they are to to we that this be based democratic we that that two the is not particularly their to the of and the of the and and the in the this the of a non-unilateralist framework for a secession can two (1) an to a (2) an for unity and the the host state, as as the seceding will political the host state to in the the host state will the secessionist community that to be secessionist in the Thus, is to that this democratic republican if will be in terms of political which are to their republican be that of The be that this precisely the of in are some people a right to secede from a modern democracy, a non-unilateral (1) to some people over a that the political and (2) to the of the political community as i.e., as my both of this be the we can consider that secession political if we for granted that political one is the host state, which be secession the host state in the as taken the of the host state its this is an secession, be an the of the host state. this a for the host state and its in a non-unilateral framework for secession conflicts. not the of this secession does not the people the other of the in the in for from in the the a in which been to and if are to the the people of the of not be any from they are from the in any they be from the but not from which the of the will to be of a democratic The territorial of their will be their within that will republican one of as the republican to that will in Thus, secession will be to any republican However, I this is The that and modern as in the of and the related of and on the one and of on the the what for democratic republicanism is to and as as to may the the one that this theory, if in be in terms. Modern democratic states are states, and as they to their not to However, for The of the as having a of the of the a useful in order to the of the states their its in an framework has not been in order to that states but (1) has a to and (2) to has an of power for I hope the in this republican if they a on the of states and The the for for center-periphery However, I (1) my theory does not the of (2) secession for any a over the a majority with its state, that an for its and (3) is some that the very of a secession the and of Thus, the of a secession and not in the of is also a for a permanent to a permanent majority from an The democratic republican developed here can be as (1) secession conflicts must be as factional ones (in as the the of center-periphery (2) a democratic republican framework for secession conflicts within modern be based on a non-unilateralist that be a non-unilateral right of secession for any democratic secessionist a non-unilateral right to territorial unity for its democratic host state, a right for both sides to when the to be and (3) the and of the framework be institutional is that are that out of the of this article, but which to be in order to this are two main of issues that to be (1) the of the of the theory what a on secession we an for secession be the of an to a in a on and (2) the of this theory on its be to non-democratic they be to other territorial as I secession conflicts as not having a based on answering the the demos question, to current I that is clear answer to this question, in in the has to be if states are to be demos if also is whether this of power the main of a democratic republican theory is not to is but to that are to and I to and for their and useful and the and the to this I conflicts of to is an the of and as as a of its interests are theories of and its its and its and its and weaknesses in with normative issues in modern

Méadhbh McIvor

THE LAW OF ORGANIZED RELIGIONS: BETWEEN ESTABLISHMENT AND SECULARISM By Rivers, Julian Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010 Pp. 400. Hardcover, $120.00. CHRISTIAN SLAVERY: CONVERSION AND RACE IN THE PROTESTANT ATLANTIC WORLD By Gerbner, Katharine Philadelphia, PN: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018 Pp. 296. Paper, $24.95. LAW AND IDENTITY IN COLONIAL SOUTH ASIA: PARSI LEGAL CULTURE, 1772–1947 By Sharafi, Mitra Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014 Pp. 368. Paper, $36.99. In November 2018, President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins signed into law the thirty-seventh amendment to the Irish Constitution, removing the word “blasphemous” from Article 40.6.1.i (which prohibited “the publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter”). A crime since the document’s 1937 ratification, the blasphemy provision was scrapped after a public vote in which nearly sixty-five percent of participants agreed to its removal. Ireland’s Constitution can only be changed by referendum. The blasphemy vote was one of several such referenda held in recent years. It followed the May 2018 decision to repeal the eighth amendment (which, by giving equal legal status to both the fetus and the woman carrying it, criminalized abortion) and 2015’s equal marriage referendum, in which Ireland became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote. Given that the official Catholic hierarchy campaigned heavily against both proposals, these votes were read as evidence that the Church was no longer the primary guiding force for the Irish people. For many outsiders, this spate of referenda—and the changing place of the Catholic Church that they were taken to signify—was met with glee: proof that the arc of history bends toward social liberalism. If conservative, religious Ireland could vote to legalize same-sex marriage, the New Yorker breathlessly suggested, so too could Mississippi (Sorkin 2015)! While some celebrated, however, others wondered how bans on abortion and blasphemy could have survived so late into the twenty-first century. “The population has moved on, [people are] no longer controlled by the Catholic Church, but a lot of the laws that were put in place are still there,” argued Michael Nugent, the head of Atheist Ireland and a veteran campaigner against the blasphemy law. “We have to chip away at them and get the state to catch up with the people” (Graham-Harrison 2018). But what would this “catching up” look like? Narratives of legal and cultural progress in which conservative religious shackles are slowly shed may make for good copy, but they rarely reflect the complicated reality governing the interaction of law, politics, and religion in contemporary nation-states. Indeed, studying the historic interaction of religion and law in named polities—that is, the law’s regulation of religion, religion’s influence on legal norms, and the semisubmerged theological underpinnings of many contemporary legal categories—is more likely to lead to recognition of the contingency of these relationships than to an acceptance of the “tidy stories” in which one is slowly filtered out from the other (Johnson, Klassen and Sullivan 2018, 5). This review offers three case studies as an introduction to historical accounts of law and religion. Focusing on the law’s regulation of religion and religion’s salience to law in post-Reformation England, the seventeenth-century Caribbean, and British-controlled India, these historical investigations of the law-religion nexus shed light on the broader contexts in which states, constitutions, communities, and “religions” are formed and governed. In particular, they emphasize the ways in which legislation concerning “religion” has involved the production and regulation of difference in multicultural, multiethnic, and multireligious states. This is demonstrated by, inter alia, the changing place of the established church in England, where the distinction between Catholic and Protestant has been somewhat superseded by the distinction between religion and the secular; the role of Christian missionaries in the racialization of slavery in the Americas, where legally enshrined Protestant supremacy developed into white supremacy; and the strategic mobilization of the law in India, where the embrace of litigation cemented a distinctive ethnoreligious identity among Zoroastrian Parsis. As all three regions struggle with political polarization and the normalization of ethnonationalism, these works shed light on the historical developments underlying such divisions, offering much needed context for scholars working in and on these countries today. If “law and religion” is a growing subfield of legal and/or religious studies, it is one that raises definitional issues familiar to scholars of both. So notes Julian Rivers’ The Law of Organized Religions, which begins: “This is a systematic study of English law as it applies to organized religions. None of these terms is particularly satisfactory” (vii). Given this difficulty, Rivers’ ability to synthesize centuries of legislation and legal cases into a coherent narrative is impressive. Beginning with the Roman conquest of Britain circa 43 CE, he provides an overview of the legal regulation of religion(s) to the present day, albeit with a focus on developments from the nineteenth century onward. It is an undeniably ambitious project, not least because, as he puts it, there is no clear “constitutional principle” that could be said to govern organized religion in English law (345). The narrative he tells is one of rising religious diversity (and tolerance of that diversity) alongside the emergence of a commonly held belief that church and state ought to be kept separate. By the mid-nineteenth century, English law had begun to move from the assumption that all religions were unlawful unless they were specifically recognized and provided for to the assumption that all religions were lawful so long as they were not outlawed. In this way, the “changing law of Church and State [is characterized by] a slow transition from the maintenance of one true religion to the principle that there is, in law, no false religion” (24). (Another way of putting it, as Rivers intimates, is that all religions are now recogniszd as being equally false, legally speaking.) Given the coterminous fact of religious establishment and separationist assumptions, the Church of England (CoE) has come to function as a kind of paradigm for church-state engagement, normalizing the presence of religion in public life for both established and nonestablished traditions. “This dynamic tension,” Rivers suggests, “has been the substitute for any statement of constitutional principle” (345). This is a story in which religious establishment and religious pluralism, although initially opposed, increasingly rely on one another to justify their place in the public sphere. Establishment continues, but it is no longer the explicitly discriminatory, punitive regime of prior decades. Indeed, representatives of the established church increasingly seek to speak on behalf of those framed, in the parlance of our times, as people of faith (as opposed to people of a particular faith, religion, or tradition)—a sharing of privilege only thinkable in a context where the critical difference is no longer that between Anglicans and Catholics, but between people “of faith” and those who do not so identify. (“Religion,” as former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams once put it, is increasingly seen to be the preserve of “oddities, foreigners and minorities” by members of the political class [Batty 2009]; and such oddities must stick together.) While this move toward religious pluralism has made it easier for members of nonestablished traditions to organize their worlds according to religious precepts and practices, it has also been accompanied by a “thoroughgoing process of secularization” that Rivers worries will impact this relatively newfound ability (25). In particular, he argues that the state’s tendency to view religious liberty as a matter of individual conscience (as opposed to actions, practices, and community norms and standards) is a troublingly narrow understanding of what religious freedom means (30–36). This strand of analysis runs throughout the book, which is critical of legal efforts to enforce normative, romanticized visions of what religion “is” or should be (for example, through requiring religious organizations to be “publicly beneficial” for the purposes of charity law, or by insisting that these organizations comply with equalities legislation in the same way other associations are expected to). Following an initial overview of the history of English law and religion, the book then adopts a thematic approach, discussing legislation and case law relating to, among others, ministers of religion; chaplaincies; faith-based welfare; and religious schools. Rivers does an admirable job of highlighting the ambivalence that seems to undergird much of the relationship between religious organizations and the law. For example, Chapter Three focuses on what he terms “the centre of the law of organized religions,” that is, “the legal constitution of religious bodies” (72). Historically, this relationship has been defined by ignorance or hostility, at least for nonestablished traditions. Roman Catholic and Jewish organizations, for example, could be easily disrupted by a legal system that did not recognize their institutional structures or social forms. More recently, however, the situation has been marked by a different kind of tension, one in which judicial oversight is simultaneously requested and resented. Religious organizations may seek the protection of the law, but they are also wary of submitting themselves to secular power. Similarly, the courts are keen to protect religious citizens even as they are wary of venturing into disputes that might be deemed “theological.” As a result, today’s English judges are (in theory) less willing to rule on issues relating to doctrine than their nineteenth-century forbears, either these in or to the of a Rivers suggests, not as a of the between regulation and but there are of and as to its If a religious a on an that the as or theological (as opposed to there may be the courts the these judges between theological and legal is, of a matter of A is in the state’s regulation of religious as which one of the of church-state law. the of New a faith-based no longer a historic but have been as of a of a tendency to public to In to with the and other Protestant the state also and the of faith are While this has been by many religious Rivers notes that it has not come state to state The of religious to and that to equalities legislation “the to which the law of is into a in which only specifically religious and As faith are a particularly clear of Rivers’ they efforts to recognize religious pluralism by on a by also secular norms and that as a to these Rivers’ is not only It is also in a of what he the of is critical of efforts to church and state and worries state into religious that although courts are increasingly willing to recognize that religious issues are they to to of the public Indeed, he that and diversity have the to in the one this will influence to the may with the that state efforts to by religious on the of or (for example, as the of are as after at least some of the for such norms from the these could as easily that these religious are by their as that their religious are by the there is a to be made that inter alia, and should be in of religious and Rivers for religious on these he to with the fact that religious liberty for some may come at the of and that is by the fact that religious is place at the same as the of secular and assumptions, on religious organizations not ought to be these would be for not to religious liberty as an In the since The Law of Organized was first religion and have to make is some evidence that judges have taken on Rivers’ of state for example, which held that Christian could not be to a with the the case law Rivers’ view that there is no “constitutional principle” governing this (345). In legal more the situation is For this of principle is A coherent of law would religious and individual citizens to where they what is expected of and from which laws they can For these the of a of religion in English law. For our however, the English case is it a guiding the law is of the fact that it has developed in to political both and to the of tolerance and as to be and to the in religious by the of As Rivers puts it, “The relationship between law and religion in any country is a of historical and England is for the legal likely to from its from the In a increasingly the regulation of religious diversity a and the “law of organized will be an of legislation and litigation long is this more than in the of and religion in what Katharine Gerbner, in recent book Christian “the Protestant on from the and from the through to the late how Protestant missionaries were in the legal of white supremacy and slavery in the More the move from Protestant supremacy (in which Protestant was with liberty and political to (in which although it was deemed with to white supremacy which than religion, had the of In so to of the and and a somewhat romanticized of Protestant missionaries as the of By how these missionaries to slavery to their Christian to legislation that Protestant status was with If their can be as the of the they should also be the long history of for of these to the lot of contemporary white supremacy has its in their efforts to this of This is an As much historical on in the focuses on its relationship to the not for their to such as the and have had scholars a into their As a of those with the for from the these Protestant missionaries and a for Christian slavery that the for the of the and nineteenth focuses on to the of from the to the late In the were that As they were opposed to the religious of those they had and missionaries with By the of the century, however, the emergence of the doctrine of Christian slavery had many such to the presence of some of as a means of and than their a of and legislation to make the case that and missionaries a role in this the for a to Chapter for example, which the for the of the in efforts to focuses on the of named and in New and to the of Protestant supremacy by the of with laws to the of Christian all to make a that they did not seek of any to from the and to their Chapter Christian to the in legislation of the word with the word as a of While have long recognized that from the this by on the relationship between the of and the of In for example, this salience in to the but population of By the late century, some members of this community were for according to English law, to be and Given that could all these to the relationship between and political The result, was the legal of a for this growing community from the to vote or for For example, between and the was rarely in Indeed, it three in years. its between and which the community was in the first of the century. The of the by an As the century, had as the primary of such as the for the of and white and the to and preserve the of legally both and of to the status of a of their religious or cultural While these to place throughout the This the in New and the of which to to the of by a that “the of not the of the as to or While had been a in the legal of those example, as in the case of who for freedom in in on the of and of of the century the of freedom from the context in which the of historical on and slavery in and the focuses on and where were into the Catholic Church against their some in which Protestant and Catholic missionaries and could one efforts at and In this way, slavery in to Catholic Similarly, among the Protestant a role in the different to for the of The Church, for example, in to from the Christian does not away from the and underlying one of the that of While some scholars the for and/or (in to religion by that one one system for it than the of to recognize this tension, a of and how and their in Christian for many some of which would have their recognized the of Protestant some as a way of and as a means of or slavery some will have been of the or of will have involved a of some example, those of have been out against the of or The case of a on in is a of the of for the and of While the the of white named is not It is likely that was by it would social or or not it an had a narrow of The same is true of the many other or with to their was an in a context of and and are “the and missionaries in the and a and religious for a system of This and to the former on which Christian Given the out and by to book is It is an for scholars and to and in our While some have or religious others the law to such was the case with Zoroastrian in the lead up to embrace and of law is the of Mitra Law and in Focusing on of the legal system from to both the of a system of law and interaction with the legal system as legal to law, and the law that controlled them by into the legal system than to English norms or their identity to the of the of them to its and to protect themselves by interaction with the the did the the of of at the of the legal and political 5). by the ways in which Zoroastrian from other in British-controlled circa While and were of law law were taken to legal As they were according to the laws of By the of a century however, the situation was only had the courts to a of law, but they had also some of the and were in English law and both working in courts and them to disputes with their Parsis. in legal was by what a In the century, the community was made up of throughout in where the community was the were only percent of the they made up percent of involved other so in the The is In to being willing to those from the community to were also willing to legalize Given that might have in a to issues the community out of a to interaction with or regulation by the seems to than on or doctrine as an focuses on the institutional that to to law. notes that they did not have at the community A there was no clear hierarchy in and the role was one of than the provision of or will to the the of a legal to or which law was an and subfield of religious (72). other in that recognized law could to had come to from between the and centuries no such of law to which to of their had been in of in other of religious may have been as a of changed the organized themselves into that and for the of legislation to marriage and English legal norms with those that this their system of law, a system by and In marked to the situation and communities, the of which were by a law system that on than were to their community and to their understanding of also how such the law to of particular is of which a role in to the as a of community While the of and in has on of a of cases to emphasize the of studying between This is a to the on and and the cases to this and on and of the racialization of community For both and the century a focus on the of as a of true This is in cases such as the of a was into the Zoroastrian religion at the of was likely was as been to an Christian This a of to seek to from the members of the community could the and the The presence of the would a the of community was the religious and or and on the of the first of the (and a of a understanding of the in held that although could be to the on a was not to by decision an increasingly of identity not only on and religion, but on as as a spate of against those who a light on “changing and religion this For a community that their distinctive identity would unless was “the of the the of of suggests, the focus on as a of the of or could not to the laws they to of the and by But being was no longer the Zoroastrian what was it In as an Given the that so it is no that these so out in (and the role of the law in of it is no that a and of was also a is in of the impact of legal analysis of and individual legal all that made law was not Zoroastrian as much as it was the fact that made also of that “law also made the for example, in the way legal this of the relationship up much less in the and the is to and were not more by legal than is as the fact that is working with historical it to the impact of these cases on an it a not least the religious and or cemented by the law system so in contemporary this with a As will no have not a not in the study of the If has not with in the focus this review on legal to the of law and the of one is that the present on the are with other tendency to between to from one context to or to relationships between and for example, that the present do not the that view today’s as the of the is to in a that its from the and works to them are what is the three is how contemporary much of the historical In England, the Americas, and India, legal disputes on the of ethnoreligious to make In all three the history the by the of a on the of for example, with the legal establishment of in England, as Julian Rivers does in The Law of Organized Similarly, the into the system studying the racialization of slavery in the century, as Katharine Christian the contemporary to the and rule to the law of which Mitra Law and such light of to be the is equally As scholars of law and religion, must be to the both and of of religious and to Ireland’s recent of constitutional who can both The New and Atheist Ireland’s Gerbner, Rivers, and for of law and religion to

Michael E. Woods

What would Abraham Lincoln do? Can his wisdom elucidate 21st-century problems? Particularly during times of discord and polarization, Americans regularly revisit the life and legacy of the sixteenth president. Writers of all political stripes have loved Lincoln and loathed him; some eagerly co-opt his image, while others curse his memory. Various left-leaning authors have praised Lincoln’s virtues, rebuked his racism, and debunked the “Great Emancipator” narrative.1 As a group, conservatives tend to be more critical. Libertarian revisionists, for instance, have condemned Lincoln for using the Civil War as a pretext to aggrandize his power. By their reckoning, an ongoing decline in American liberty can be traced directly to Lincoln’s presidency.2 Others have tarred Lincoln as a socialist sympathizer with dictatorial tendencies.3 In contrast, conservative scholar Thomas Krannawitter has defended Lincoln against attacks from the right and left alike.4 Lincoln’s legacy remains fiercely contested within and between segments of the political spectrum.The worst of these books, which are legion, rip facts and quotations out of context and arrange them to support a pre-ordained partisan position. But when trained scholars, who respect nuance and are well-versed in primary and secondary sources, take up the case, their findings deserve close consideration. A Just and Generous Nation: Abraham Lincoln and the Fight for American Opportunity is a good example. Co-authored by prolific Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer and economist Norton Garfinkle, this book reappraises Lincoln in light of the economic issues, including wealth disparities and diminishing social mobility, which shape modern political debate. Much like scholars who probed Lincoln’s racial beliefs during the Civil Rights Movement,5 Holzer and Garfinkle invite us to reevaluate Lincoln’s economic ideas in the era of Occupy Wall Street and the campaign for a $15 minimum wage. Lincoln regularly fell short of 20th-century standards for racial egalitarianism, but Holzer and Garfinkle find that Lincoln has much to teach us about liberty, equality, and economic opportunity. They contend that “Lincoln, as our most clear-eyed president, was the first to fully understand what America is all about and to tell us so in unfailingly clear terms how to use positive government action to build and maintain a successful middle-class society.” (257)The authors develop their two-pronged thesis in a fast-paced and accessible book divided into two parts. Part One focuses on Lincoln’s life, weaving his economic thought into an engaging narrative which covers his humble origins, swift rise to prominence, and tumultuous presidency. The main point is that Lincoln, a quintessential antislavery Whig, consistently supported public policies that fostered upward mobility by creating opportunities for working people to attain middle-class comfort and security. For Lincoln, government was part of the solution, not part of the problem. Tariffs, internal improvements, and investment in education helped make his dream of a vibrant middle-class society a reality—at least in the North.Lincoln’s middle-class American Dream also shaped his stance on slavery. Restrictions on slavery’s expansion would shield socially mobile northerners from the stagnant, aristocratic South, where laborers languished in servitude or grinding poverty. Fully convinced of American—specifically free-state—exceptionalism, Lincoln believed that the fate of working people was at stake in the battle over slavery’s westward extension. It was to protect their opportunities that Lincoln joined the Republican Party and, eventually, fought the Civil War. “Lincoln focused his entire political career, in peace and war alike, in pursuit of economic opportunity for the widest possible circle of hardworking Americans,” write Holzer and Garfinkle. “To achieve this ambition he was willing to fight a war to maintain the perpetual existence of the one nation in the world that held the highest promise for people dedicated to his cause.” (2) Economic ideals formed the bedrock of Lincoln’s antislavery Unionism.After outlining the origins and substance of Lincoln’s economic worldview, the authors argue that it shaped his handling of the Union war effort and his eventual support for abolition. At times Lincoln’s economic vision seems rather tangential to the narrative, particularly during discussions of Civil War strategy and campaigns. But the authors demonstrate the depth of Lincoln’s commitment to upwardly mobile free labor and illustrate how profoundly it shaped his Unionism and his critique of slavery. Anyone wondering why “the Union” mattered so much to Lincoln, or why an Illinois attorney was so preoccupied by the fate of Kansas, will find compelling explanations here. As a fresh and accessible discussion of Lincoln’s political and economic thought, A Just and Generous Nation is a welcome contribution to a crowded field.Part Two traces the post-1865 history of Lincolnian political economy. Building on Garfinkle’s The American Dream vs. The Gospel of Wealth: The Fight for a Productive Middle-Class Economy (2007), the authors argue that American politics has hinged on a contest between Lincoln’s version of the American Dream, upheld by the likes of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and an elitist Gospel of Wealth which coalesced during the Gilded Age and persists under the guise of supply-side economics. Ironies abound. Post-Civil War economic development supplanted Lincoln’s society of independent producers with one dominated by corporate titans who defined freedom in Social Darwinian terms and rejected public programs to help working people. Long-cherished ideals of thrift, industriousness, and personal responsibility now justified staggering inequality. According to the increasingly authoritative Gospel of Wealth, the notion that one could rise through hard work was “transmuted from Lincoln’s message of hope” into a “rationale for . . . condemning the working poor for their very poverty.” (175)When Lincoln’s vision returned in the 20th century, it was primarily embraced by Democrats, who consciously aligned themselves with the first Republican president. None did so more faithfully than Franklin Roosevelt. Holzer and Garfinkle contend that the New Deal “was a modern version of Lincoln’s commitment to government action to support a prosperous middle-class society.” (198) It updated Lincoln’s policy prescriptions to fit the realities of an industrial society, but its spirit was similar. Crucially, it worked. For several generations, key New Deal innovations, including unemployment insurance, regulation of financial markets, and Social Security, undergirded a flourishing middle-class society. Late in the 20th century, however, conservatives counterattacked by giving the Gospel of Wealth a populist appeal. Claiming to be Lincoln’s heirs, they sponsored policies that created vast disparities of wealth and limited upward mobility for the poor. Perhaps nothing better demonstrated their misappropriation of Lincoln than Ronald Reagan’s speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention. Reagan contended that Republicans adhered to Lincoln’s principles, quoting several memorable maxims as proof: “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. . . . You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.” (224) Days later, a sharp-eyed journalist showed that the sayings were not Lincoln’s at all, but aphorisms written fifty years after Appomattox by William Boetcker, a minister who conscripted Lincoln into serving his anti-trade union activities.Holzer and Garfinkle admire Lincoln’s American Dream and urge present and future policymakers to rediscover it. They argue that Lincoln “left a legacy of guidance for subsequent American leaders” to achieve his worthy goals. (156) In a prescriptive final chapter, they endorse proposals, from an estate tax hike to investment in infrastructure that would harmonize federal policy with Lincoln’s ideals. They acknowledge the difficulty of selling these programs to a skeptical electorate and a recalcitrant Congress. But they also demonstrate that Americans need not look overseas to figure out how to use “the resources of the federal government to give reality to the idea of America as an enduring middle-class society.” (259) Lincoln and Roosevelt can be our guides.Some of the ideas in this book will be familiar to specialists. In 1978, renowned historian Gabor Boritt published Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream, in which he argued that the “right to rise” was essential to Lincoln’s vision of a just and prosperous society. Striving to find consistency between Lincoln’s obscure early career and his illustrious presidency, Boritt argued that Lincoln’s commitment to “the ideal that all men should receive a full, good, and ever increasing reward for their labors so that they might have the opportunity to rise in life” was a “central theme” of his political life.6 Early on, it encouraged Lincoln to champion a Whiggish program of state-supported economic development. After the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), it inspired Lincoln’s antislavery activity and steeled him to battle the Confederacy. Published in a time of economic stagnation, popular disillusionment, and ideological polarization, Boritt’s study remains relevant today, and Holzer and Garfinkle cite it approvingly. Their book can be read as an effort to reinvigorate and popularize Boritt’s thesis after forty years of political history shaped by the Reagan Revolution and the ascendancy of the Gospel of Wealth.Holzer and Garfinkle’s post-1865 analysis and policy prescriptions distinguish A Just and Generous Nation from Boritt’s work and will likely make their volume more controversial. Some readers might balk at the authors’ candid search for a useful past. But if we refuse to learn from history, what good is it? Still, even the most sympathetic readers may wonder if this book will change many minds. Holzer and Garfinkle write with great passion and sophistication. But in a contentious political climate, a direct appeal to Lincoln’s legacy may not win many converts. The recent popular literature on Lincoln—not to mention the sentiments expressed in customer reviews and other online sounding boards—suggests that many people who support policies associated with the Gospel of Wealth also detest Lincoln. In this context, it would require Lincolnian political skill to convince skeptics that an active federal government can promote individual freedom, upward mobility, and economic growth.Some specialists may also wish that the authors had explored the less-inspiring foundations of the middle-class northern society for which Lincoln spoke, fought, and died. In terms of labor and social mobility, it was certainly very different from the Old South; no honest reader of James H. Hammond’s “Mudsill” address could deny it. But the slave plantation was an integral part of the national and global economy.7 Northern workers processed slave-grown cotton. Northern consumers smoked slave-grown tobacco. Northern farmers sold food to slaveholding buyers. These interconnections suggest that antebellum America’s distinctive but interdependent regional economies cannot be compartmentalized. Upward mobility for northern laborers may have been threatened by slavery’s expansion, but it was also bolstered by slavery’s existence. When one reflects on the dispossession of Native Americans—who appear as shadowy foes during Lincoln’s abbreviated Black Hawk War service—the story of northern economic opportunity grows even grimmer.These observations do not discredit Holzer and Garfinkle’s key arguments about Lincoln’s economic and political ideals. They have grounded Lincoln’s career in an inspirational vision of broad opportunity, and they have clarified what Lincoln was doing when he fought to preserve, and eventually expand, American liberty. But one hopes that efforts to revive Lincoln’s American Dream will not promote veiled or invisible injustices. Lincoln’s contemporaries readily ignored the miseries of those who were overlooked or oppressed by the American Dream. It would be easy for us to do the same, particularly because we have outsourced so much of the labor exploitation and environmental devastation that makes modern middle-class life possible. Holzer and Garfinkle have explored many pertinent questions about liberty, opportunity, and public policy in the 19th and the 21st centuries. Hopefully, their work will inspire other scholars to follow suit.

Mark E. Steiner

After John J. Duff and John P. Frank published books on Abraham Lincoln’s legal career in the early 1960s, more than forty years passed before another book on the subject appeared.1 This remarkable drought for the fecund soil of Lincolniana ended, however, when the Lincoln Legal Papers project (LLP) revitalized interest in lawyer Lincoln. Under the leadership of Cullom Davis and Daniel Stowell, the LLP collected, cataloged, and scanned thousands of documents. A complete edition was published in 2000 in DVD format; it has been superseded by an online edition that appeared in 2009.2 A four-volume selected edition was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2008.3 Moreover, members of the LLP staff—the late William D. Beard, Davis, Susan Krause, John A. Lupton, Stacy Pratt McDermott, Christopher A. Schnell, and Stowell—also were producing much of the new scholarship on Lincoln’s law practice or, more generally, law in Lincoln’s Illinois.4In the antediluvian era, biographers paid little attention to Lincoln’s law practice. Lincoln biographies usually included a couple of chapters that touched on his legal career. Albert J. Beveridge, in his 1928 biography, mentioned a fair number of cases but discussed at length only a handful; those cases have become canonical. Until the onset of the LLP, most biographies only mentioned the same cases that Beveridge had highlighted: In re Jane Bryant (the Matson case); State v. Armstrong (the Almanac Trial); Illinois Central Rail Road v. McLean County; McCormick v. Talcott (the Manny Reaper case); and Hurd v. Rock Island Bridge Company (the Effie Afton case).5Biographers had neglected Lincoln’s law practice for a couple of reasons. First, as Herndon once wrote, “a law office is a dull, dry place.”6 Biographers weren’t interested in the legal practice, because they believed the legal practice wasn’t interesting. But there were other reasons as well. J. G. Randall, in 1936, noted how important sources for Lincoln’s law practice “still remain difficult of access.”7 Mark E. Neely, in 1993, concluded that “Lincoln’s professional life remains surprisingly inaccessible to the historian as well, though the problem in this realm is largely archival.” Neely also believed that “more specialized studies” of the “arcane legal practices” of Lincoln’s day were needed.8 Those two problems—accessibility of documents and demystifying specialized studies—have been met by the publication of the legal papers and by the extensive scholarship by the LLP staff and others.Although David Donald’s 1995 biography was written while the LLP was still collecting and sorting documents, it nonetheless showed the LLP’s impact on Lincoln scholarship. Donald hailed the LLP as “perhaps the most important archival investigation now under way in the United States.” Donald had been able to examine unpublished documents from the LLP files and thus gave the most complete accounting of Lincoln’s law practice in a biography. The benefits of the LLP were again seen in Michael Burlingame’s magisterial biography, published in 2008. Recent books that have focused on the pre-presidential years also reflect the influence of the LLP in their treatment of the law practice.9Other writers also have benefited from LLP’s vast riches. At least fourteen books on Lincoln’s law practice have been published since 2000. There have been two general treatments of the law practice, a study of Lincoln’s cases involving the medical profession, an analysis of Lincoln’s murder cases, a collection of articles on different aspects of the law practice, and two books examining Lincoln’s circuit riding.10 Seven books have focused on one particular case handled by Lincoln. Five are on canonical cases: two on the Almanac Trial, two on the Effie Afton case, and one on the Matson case.11 The other two books explore relatively overlooked murder cases.12Both Dekle and McGinty have taken great advantage of the materials collected by the LLP. McGinty notes that “all modern studies of Lincoln’s legal practice are indebted to the Lincoln Legal Papers project.” After noting the Legal Papers are “indispensable sources of information,” McGinty states, “This book could not have been written, nor could the story of the Effie Afton case have been told—or told as well—without them” (10). Dekle reproduces all the legal documents from the LLP case file on the Almanac Trial as an appendix (151–64). Both cases were included in The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases.13Dekle and McGinty have very different goals for their books. Dekle calls the Almanac Trial Lincoln’s “most famous case.” He does not argue that the case was particularly important for Lincoln or that it has any wider significance for American history. He is interested in trying to uncover what actually happened at the trial. McGinty calls the Effie Afton case the “most significant of Lincoln’s career” and “one of the most important ever heard in Illinois.” If anything, McGinty believes that this “strangely neglected” case should be more widely known. His goal is not only to tell the story of the Effie Afton case but to explain Lincoln’s role and to place the case in a broader context of the “epochal clash of the railroads and the steamboats at the river’s edge” (2). Both authors achieve their aims in writing these books. And both books share something else: well-chosen illustrations.Most of the documents uncovered by the LLP yield little without great effort. Docket entries, pleadings, and subpoenas are all mostly formulaic. The materials available for these two cases are markedly different, and the two authors capitalize on the differences. The Effie Afton case was one of only three cases handled by Lincoln that produced what would now be called a transcript of the trial (102).14 Because the Duff Armstrong murder trial was featured in Lincoln campaign biographies, participants and observers left behind many reminiscences.15 Dekle’s main task is sorting out these conflicting reminiscences to determine what probably happened at the trial.Both Dekle and McGinty are lawyers. James G. Randall in his 1936 essay “Has the Lincoln Theme Been Exhausted?” observed that “the hand of the amateur has rested heavily upon Lincoln studies.” Randall believed that Lincoln scholarship required “further critical development by historically trained scholars.”16 The hand of lawyers has rested heavily on studies of lawyer Lincoln. The first five books about Lincoln’s law practice were written by lawyers who had no historical training: Frederick Trevor Hill (1906); John T. Richards (1916), Albert A. Woldman (1936), Duff (1960), and Frank (1961).17 When Neely revisited Randall’s essay in 1979, he noted that “legal history is an area where professionalism has been slow to take command.” In 1979 this was still an area where Randall’s “trained historical specialist is rarely seen.”18Dekle in the preface to his book modestly admits he is “neither a historian nor a Lincoln Scholar” (x). Dekle practiced criminal law for thirty years as an assistant district attorney. He is now the director of the Criminal Prosecution Clinic at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. McGinty left the practice of law to become a professional writer and historian. Like Lincoln the lawyer, McGinty the historian is self-taught. Among his ten previous books are well-received studies of the Supreme Court during the Civil War and the case of Ex parte Merryman.19Both authors believe that their own experiences as lawyers help them understand lawyer Lincoln. This, in fact, is the central conceit of Dekle’s book. Dekle says that he “felt equal to the task of unraveling the Almanac Trial because if I had learned anything during my three decades as a criminal trial lawyer, I learned how to investigate, prosecute, and defend murder cases.” Dekle carries this argument of authority too far, and it sometimes leads him to presentism. He assumes throughout the book that practicing law in Illinois in 1850s is the same as practicing law now. Dekle often makes conclusions based on his own experience, assuming that his time spent in a Florida courtroom in the past thirty years are the same as Lincoln’s experiences in antebellum Illinois. For example, he says, “In my experiences as a trial lawyer, negative character evidence of this type is near worthless” (104).For example, Dekle points out that Duff Armstrong could have had a lawyer appointed to represent him if he couldn’t afford the services of one but that the lawyer wouldn’t have been paid. Dekle then asserts, “It is an unfortunate fact of life, however, that underpaid lawyers often do not defend their clients with the zeal displayed by well-paid lawyers” (3). But has this “fact of life” always been true? Armstrong’s case was tried when judges and lawyers rode the circuit. Each county of the circuit held two terms of court. Holding court was a form of public entertainment, and members of the community would turn out to see trials. With large crowds in attendance, wouldn’t even an unpaid lawyer have a lot at stake? Effective representation would be an advertisement for future legal services.This presentist viewpoint permeates the book. One example is the discussion of William Norris, who was charged with murder along with Duff Armstrong. Norris, who had been charged and acquitted of murder a year earlier in Macon County, did not attempt to change venue to another county, a move that might have benefited him. This fact has led to “unjustified criticism” of his lawyer, William Walker, according to Dekle, who explains that this “gross error” wasn’t his lawyer’s fault.The assumption is what is lawful or ethical for lawyers now was lawful or ethical in Illinois in 1857. The law of lawyering was not fully developed in antebellum America; there weren’t any laws or formal bar association rules that are analogous to modern codes of ethics or disciplinary rules.20Dekle rejects one version of Lincoln’s cross-examination of Charles Allen (which claimed Lincoln didn’t question Allen about the almanac but instead turned to the jurors and asked whom they believed), because it would have been “excellent theater but improper trial procedure. During the examination of a witness, the lawyers simply ask questions of the witness without making asides to the jury.” Lincoln’s purported behavior would have been a “breach of courtroom protocol” (88). While this behavior would undoubtedly be a breach of courtroom protocol in any modern courtroom, I’m not sure the rule applied in 1857. A complicating factor for Dekle’s assumption about courtroom rules is that in 1857, an Illinois statute said that the jury was to “be judges of the law and the facts.”21Dekle in his penultimate chapter is more careful about not applying twenty-first-century standards to the Almanac Trial. Some writers have characterized Lincoln’s final argument as inflammatory and unethical, as Lincoln assumed facts not in evidence and made emotional appeals based on his relationship with the Armstrong family. While Dekle concedes by “modern standards” Lincoln’s argument was objectionable, he answers this criticism by pointing out, “We have no business using a twenty-first-century yardstick to measure a nineteenth-century speech” (113). Another criticism of Lincoln is that he unethically refused to hear what a witness wanted to tell him about what he saw that fateful evening. Lincoln was planning to call Will Watkins to establish that he was the owner of the possible murder weapon. Watkins, who later said he had seen Armstrong strike Metzker with a wagon hammer, was afraid that once he got on the witness stand he would have to tell what he saw. According to one account, Watkins “began to tell Lincoln what he knew, and Mr. Lincoln would not allow him to tell him anything” (135). Dekle establishes that there would been no duty for a defense lawyer in 1857 to discover what Watkins knew. Finally, Dekle discusses whether the cross-examination of Watkins by the state would have been restricted to matters Watkins had testified about during Lincoln’s direct examination, as some writers have questioned whether that rule existed in antebellum Illinois. While Dekle can’t find a case on point from Illinois before 1929, he cites a U.S. Supreme Court opinion that in 1840 had recognized this rule as “well established” (115–16).Dekle presents three different versions of the Armstrong murder trial that he has found in the literature about the case. Version one has Lincoln securing acquittal by his masterful cross-examination of a key prosecution witness. Through the use of an almanac, Lincoln proves that the witness would not have been aided by moonlight to have seen what he claimed he saw. This version “has entered the pantheon of great moments in the history of American trial advocacy” (7). The urtext for the version was the novel The Graysons: A Story of Illinois (1887).22 Version two (which, chronologically, appeared first) has Lincoln securing acquittal primarily through an emotional appeal in his closing argument that mentioned Lincoln’s relationship in New Salem with Armstrong’s father, who had recently died. This version, which doesn’t mention Lincoln’s cross-examination or use of the almanac, was tied to Lincoln’s campaign for president; it first appeared in the Cleveland Leader the day after Lincoln was nominated for president at the Republican national convention. Lincoln’s representation of Duff Armstrong then figured prominently in campaign biographies, which obviously helps explain why it became Lincoln’s “most famous case” (13).23 Version three also was connected to Lincoln’s presidential campaign; it was the counternarrative advanced by Lincoln’s opponents. This version depicted Lincoln faking the almanac. Instead of the virtuous lawyer, there was “Lincoln the Trickster” (18–19).Dekle ultimately concludes that “the famous cross-examination” didn’t happen. He looks at the various versions of it. (That Dekle calls these versions “variant transcripts” is like calling a forged Monet painting a “variant Monet,” since none of them is a transcript of the cross-examination [87].) Some of these versions are rightly dismissed out of hand because they are fictional or dramatizations of what the writer believed likely happened. Others are dismissed because they are factually inaccurate. Irving Younger, an expert of the law of evidence, concocted a mixture of earlier versions (94).Dekle is convinced that Lincoln used an almanac to contradict Allen’s testimony. The dispute, for Dekle, “arises over when Lincoln did his contradicting” (87). Lincoln could have immediately confronted the witness during the cross-examination, or he could have waited to contradict the witness during his final argument. Dekle concludes Lincoln waited. J. W. Donovan, the first to claim that Lincoln confronted Allen during his cross-examination, did so in 1898 (over forty years later!) and appears to have appropriated the cross-examination from Eggleston’s fictional account.But what good did the almanac do? Dekle details the “precise nature of the contradiction Lincoln found in the almanac.” Charles Allen, the key witness against Armstrong, testified that he saw the by the of the Some sources claim that the almanac showed there was no in the that while claim Lincoln’s almanac showed the was near Dekle concludes that the almanac showed the was near He rejects those who the almanac no as their as they Dekle also rejects the which first appeared during the presidential campaign of for 1857 showed the on the the almanac would have been a because the for 1857 showed that the had not that the was a Dekle the that Lincoln used a almanac by pointing out that the would have him as Dekle had a McGinty the Effie Afton case on the The first five chapters the of the by the of the Effie Afton against the Bridge McGinty with a discussion of the of on the He also discusses Lincoln’s with and and his early for like and McGinty also details the of The chapter be the of Lincoln’s law chapter details the of the Rock Island In gave of way to public to any by a state to a The Illinois the Bridge it to a near Rock Island so as it did not the of the McGinty also does a good of the in and the legal in earlier One of the more aspects of Lincoln’s career is how some who would later prominently during the Civil War his years Davis the story as of the War Davis tried to the of the probably because he a to the The U.S. for Illinois to the but John McLean later in the McLean did that if were by any of by the then the would be chapter does a masterful of the which two after the The Effie Afton had and over of The of the the Effie Afton with a before for the When it was through the it one of the then and then a in the of the and The was also with the on the Illinois against the was The chapters are about that The were and had significant were also by in and other who for the After the was in court in for the of Rock Island Lincoln didn’t the defense after the was books are of how Lincoln often with other lawyers to In the Almanac Trial, Lincoln and William in Duff Lincoln the defense many had been and many had been was Lincoln’s McGinty fair with the evidence and concludes that the did not believe that Lincoln was to as Dekle’s book is based largely on McGinty on on the case that appeared in the trial for the and for the and later the McGinty notes that recognized the trial one of the most that had ever taken place in an American The trial in 1857. Lincoln does not to have taken in the The then over Lincoln does not to have made his during the case in was then the and McGinty were about to their by a lawyer from with a remarkable and a of trial as the lawyer for the Lincoln made his first in the trial an whether about the over the was The to this because it wasn’t to the of the first for the that “the good of the should be Lincoln then that the would not be a one in of the of the While the for an of the in Lincoln’s as they should to the nature and of McLean the evidence for the of the of the the evidence couldn’t be used to “the nature of the other significant to the defense was one of the closing to the closing and he only gave of what he the most important by the lawyers” McGinty is able to use to a of how good Lincoln was as a trial Lincoln by the jury did not to that he to as he but not Lincoln many used of two He that the of the the of railroads and and the of the Lincoln also that the was if the jury the would Lincoln are by the to the when a along it is for him to on of this which has been trial in a a for the since the had the of While the case wasn’t Lincoln’s tried their with other which didn’t One of the Effie Afton a which was dismissed in A to the was in Lincoln’s Afton career. He in my to the Effie Afton case a for Lincoln’s to the Because of the for Lincoln and at the state in were critical for Lincoln’s If Lincoln in then Lincoln wouldn’t have been the and there wouldn’t have been a and then Lincoln wouldn’t have been the Republican in explains that history two First, railroads over steamboats and a key role in a new Lincoln became a in an American The Effie Afton case how lawyer Lincoln to the with to the on the and to turn the an future of and books to Lincoln McGinty has written the of the Effie Afton case by not only the but also wider Dekle the of what probably happened at the Almanac the most famous cross-examination in American history didn’t actually But he written the on the trial. on Dekle’s a future of lawyer Lincoln to explain why this trial became Lincoln’s “most famous case.”

André Borges

This chapter analyzes how multilevel elections, strong subnational governments, and decentralized electoral rules shape the workings of Brazil’s democratic institutions. I seek to answer two major questions. First, to what extent have institutions adopted by the 1988 Constitution created effective incentives for party nationalization and integration and, therefore, for organization of party competition around the dispute over the national executive? Second, what is the impact of multilevel elections on electoral coordination and party fragmentation in congressional races? The core argument is that the institutional mix chosen by the drafters of the 1988 Constitution created cross-cutting incentives. Concurrent presidential, national legislative, and state elections since 1994 have tended to strengthen presidential coattails and the related incentives for party coordination around presidential campaigns, and extensive presidential legislative powers facilitate centralization of the policy-making process. But, although these institutions foster the organization of a nationalized party system and effective intergovernmental coordination, incentives and opportunities provided by multilevel elections in the context of autonomous subnational party branches and highly permissive electoral rules allow for the survival and growth of poorly integrated, office-seeking party organizations organized around subnational races. The chapter concludes that Brazil’s federalism weakens the connection between presidential and legislative races, while at the same time fostering high levels of party fragmentation, therefore increasing the costs of coalition formation.

Leonor Freire Costa, Paulo Brito

This paper considers growing fiscal capacity of the European early modern states as contingent to taxpayer’s consent in higher tax loads. It puts forward the hypothesis that war damages were the main factor guiding the taxpayer’s cost-benefit assessment of consenting or violently resisting to a fiscal innovation. To test the hypotheses, we consider data on Portugal in times of political struggle against the Habsburgs to restore and keep the political autonomy after 1640. The war was financed by an entirely new, universal income tax, remaining in the Portuguese fiscal system well until the liberal revolution in 1820, although enforced by a decentralized and nonspecialized administration. A model derives the optimal tax rate from the standpoint of the taxpayer as a function of war intensity, risk aversion, and awareness that evasion would enhance war damages. Data on damages, contemporary assessments of the tax base, and amounts enforced allow the model’s calibration. Results suggest the accuracy of the hypothesis and draw the conclusion that taxpayers’ utility in paying the new tax determined the efective tax rate (tax enforced). This paper claims that ultimately improvements in the fiscal capacity of states needed taxpayer’s perception of high levels of destruction, hence any political regime in early modern Europe must have found in war damages a persuasive argument to make efective a fiscal innovation. The other contribution of this case study is pointing out the advantage of the assignment of the tax collection to local, non-professional administration, for the endurance of a fiscal system, which incorporated an income tax that withstood the liberal revolution. It enhanced the role of peer monitoring and turned out to be an efective way of instilling social norms contributing to build up the taxpayer’s liability, which somehow the liberal state in 19th century exploited within a different technological environment.

Jonathan Cottrell

This is a rich, ambitious, and original study. Graciela De Pierris aims to give a new account of the relationship between Hume's skepticism and his naturalism. Notoriously, Hume gives skeptical arguments targeting our best methods of inquiry, such as inductive reasoning. So, how can he—in good intellectual conscience—endorse and rely on those very methods, in his own naturalistic investigation of the human mind (his “science of man”)? Some scholars answer that, despite his skeptical arguments, Hume does not ultimately conclude that we lack justification for beliefs formed through induction or the other methods of inquiry that he employs as a scientist of man. Others answer that his skeptical arguments do not target his own preferred conception of these methods.De Pierris rejects both of these approaches. In her view, Hume argues for a form of skepticism that is “radical,” in that it targets his own preferred conception of our best methods of inquiry—the one that he endorses, as a practicing scientist of man. However, his “radical skepticism” and his “naturalism” can coexist because they constitute two different but mutually complementary “standpoints,” which must both “remain permanently available to all reflective thinkers” (22). In developing and defending this view, De Pierris offers an original interpretation not just of Hume but of early modern philosophy more broadly. She claims that Hume's views have been distorted by scholars who approach them from contemporary perspectives, such as cognitive psychology or naturalized epistemology. She therefore aims to understand Hume's skepticism and naturalism by placing them in the philosophical context of his own time. In doing so, she gives a novel account of the major intellectual fault lines in early modern philosophy.De Pierris divides early modern philosophers along two cross-cutting lines. First, she divides them based on their theories of mental content and “ultimate evidence.” Descartes and Locke accept what she calls “the presentational-phenomenological model of apprehension and ultimate evidence” (hereafter, PPM). According to PPM, we can be acquainted with an “ostensively given” particular content (for example, a particular sensory image) prior to grasping any general contents, such as formal rules of inference, and “ultimate evidence” derives from such acquaintance with particular contents. In opposition to these philosophers, Leibniz accepts the “logical-conceptual model,” according to which we must grasp a system of universal logical rules prior to any particular content, and “ultimate evidence” derives from this system of rules. (De Pierris's conception of “ultimate evidence” seems to have several components, including at least the following: ultimate evidence is the best possible evidence available to us; it confers certainty; and all other evidence derives from and depends on it.)With respect to this first division, De Pierris argues that Hume's theory of impressions and ideas is a version of PPM and is therefore a normative epistemological theory, not just a descriptive psychological one. Hume's version of PPM is the basis for his skeptical arguments, including his arguments for radical skepticism. Here, De Pierris assigns particular importance to Hume's distinction between natural and philosophical relations. As she interprets it, this distinction concerns two different kinds of mental activity: (i) unreflective, associative processes (natural relations) and (ii) reflective assessments of the evidence that particular contents are, or are not, related in certain ways (philosophical relations). Her view that Hume's notion of a philosophical relation is normative (insofar as it concerns the assessment of evidence) is original and informs her interpretation of his argument about induction in Treatise 1.3.6, discussed below.De Pierris's second division is between “mechanical philosophers,” who accept the “demonstrative ideal” of natural knowledge, and philosophers who accept Newton's rival, inductivist ideal. According to the former group, causal relationships are akin to geometric ones—an effect is a “necessary, quasi-geometric consequence” of its cause (164)—and science aims at a priori, demonstrative knowledge of them. Descartes and Leibniz accept this view. And, although Locke denies that we can attain a priori, demonstrative knowledge of nature, he accepts this as an unattainable ideal; this explains why he denies that we can have a genuine science of nature. In contrast, Newton rejects the demonstrative conception of natural knowledge, even as an unattainable ideal. According to his rival methodology, science ideally aims not at demonstration but at inductive “proof”—that is, inductive inference from a perfectly constant conjunction that we have experienced. De Pierris argues that Hume belongs in the Newtonian camp, based on several considerations, including a comparison of Hume's “rules by which to judge of causes and effects” with Newton's “rules for the study of natural philosophy” in the Principia. She sees this as “an important new argument against the skeptical realist interpretation of Hume” (187n258), which, she claims, wrongly assimilates his position to Locke's (14). However, she nowhere considers a striking passage from Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, where Philo suggests that “the whole economy of the universe” may be conducted by a necessity like that of arithmetic, “though no human algebra can furnish a key, which solves the difficulty” (Hume 1947, 191). This passage presents a view like that which De Pierris attributes to Locke, and skeptical realist interpreters have made much of it, so it is disappointing that she neglects to discuss it.De Pierris interprets Hume's skepticism and naturalism in the context of these divisions among early modern philosophers. As she understands it, his naturalism consists chiefly in his endorsement of Newtonian inductive methodology. It is therefore a normative position, not just a descriptive one. Hume's naturalism also involves a distinctive conception of causal necessity, as a projection of “the normative force of our best inductive methods . . . onto nature itself” (176). If I understand this correctly, it means that, for Hume, our conception of causal necessity just is the conception of conformity to those regularities that our best inductive methods tell us that we should believe to obtain. This “epistemological notion” of causal necessity differs from both the mechanical philosophers’ quasi-geometrical notion and the regularity theory of causation that some scholars attribute to Hume, which are both “ontological” (176).Hume's skepticism, on the other hand, derives from his version of PPM. De Pierris finds two main lines of skeptical argument in Hume. One concerns mathematical knowledge; the other concerns natural knowledge and, relatedly, the nature of causation. Each argument has two stages. At the first stage, Hume targets his philosophical opponents’ conception of the knowledge in question. Numerous scholars think that his skeptical arguments end here. But De Pierris holds that these arguments have a second stage, at which Hume targets his own preferred conception of the knowledge in question—the conception that he endorses, as part of his naturalism. This is where his skepticism becomes “radical.”De Pierris's “skeptical inductivist” interpretation of Treatise 1.3.6 (and the corresponding passages of the “Abstract” and first Enquiry) is particularly interesting and original. She claims that this section gives a skeptical argument targeting “causation as a philosophical relation” (240)—that is, targeting the best evidence we can have, when reflectively comparing two phenomenologically given particulars, that they are causally related. For Hume, Newton's inductive methodology specifies what such evidence consists in: experience of a perfectly constant conjunction, which serves as the basis for an inductive “proof,” rather than a mere probability. According to Newton, an inductive proof relies, implicitly or explicitly, on the principle that nature is “ever consonant with itself” (as he puts it in the Principia). In Treatise 1.3.6, Hume argues that we have no good reason to accept this Newtonian uniformity principle. This is a normative, epistemological form of skepticism that targets Hume's own preferred conception of natural knowledge. Hence, De Pierris's interpretation differs from the “cognitive mechanisms” approach of Don Garrett and David Owen, who claim that Treatise 1.3.6 argues for a purely descriptive, nonnormative conclusion about the psychological processes that cause our beliefs about the unobserved. De Pierris's interpretation also differs from Peter Millican's (2002) skeptical interpretation of the corresponding section of the first Enquiry, according to which Hume's argument targets a conception of inductive reasoning that he himself does not endorse.For De Pierris, then, Hume gives skeptical arguments targeting what are, by his own lights, our best methods of scientific inquiry. So how can he continue to endorse and rely on those methods, as a practicing scientist of man? De Pierris claims that Hume's philosophy involves two different “standpoints,” each with its own normative standards. From the “standpoint of common life and science,” Hume endorses and employs Newtonian inductive methodology. From the “radical skeptical standpoint,” he argues that we lack justification for the uniformity principle that underwrites this very methodology. De Pierris claims that these two standpoints cannot be integrated but are nonetheless mutually complementary because those who occupy the standpoint of common life and science (including Newton and his followers) are frequently tempted into religion and superstition, and the radical skeptical standpoint serves to counter this temptation. She contrasts this interpretation with what she calls “the vehicle view,” on which Hume's skeptical arguments serve merely as a preliminary stage, clearing the way for his positive, naturalistic science of man. On her interpretation, by contrast, the radical skeptical standpoint must remain permanently available to the scientist of man, to serve as a check on our superstitious inclinations. She also contrasts her interpretation with Garrett's, which appeals to Hume's “Title Principle,” that “where reason is lively, and mixes itself with some propensity, it ought to be assented to. Where it does not, it can never have any title to operate on us” (Treatise 1.4.7.11/270).1 According to Garrett, this principle gives Hume epistemic permission to pursue his science of man, and to retain a significant degree of belief in its findings, despite the skeptical considerations that he raises. De Pierris gives some interesting objections to this proposal and claims that Hume recommends philosophy not because we have a “propensity” to it but because it is a safer guide than superstition.I am not convinced that De Pierris succeeds in removing the tension between Hume's skepticism and naturalism. For two reasons, it seems to me that the Humean scientist of man, as characterized by De Pierris, is irrational by his or her own lights.First, I can find only one argument in this book that supports Newtonian methodology. It proceeds by using Hume's version of PPM to eliminate the mechanical philosophers’ alternative methodology: Hume argues that a cause and its effect are always phenomenologically separable, and therefore lack an internal necessary connection that would allow us to demonstrate the existence of one from that of the other—contrary to the mechanical philosophers’ “demonstrative ideal” of natural knowledge. However, Hume's version of PPM is also the basis for his radical skeptical argument against Newtonian methodology (225, 237n297). So, someone who accepts Hume's version of PPM is rationally committed to rejecting both the mechanical philosophy and the Newtonian alternative. And so, it is irrational to accept Newtonian methodology on the strength of Hume's PPM-based argument against the mechanical philosophy.Second, according to De Pierris, Treatise 1.4.1 argues that Hume's own “rules by which to judge of causes and effects” epistemically require us to reduce our degree of belief in the conclusion of any piece of reasoning to zero. The Humean scientist of man endorses these rules. So, if he or she continues to believe any conclusions of reasoning, then this is irrational, by his or her own lights.It therefore seems to me that De Pierris's Hume cannot, in good intellectual conscience, pursue his science of man. In contrast, Garrett's Hume (who accepts the Title Principle) is epistemically permitted do so.There is much of value in this book beyond its main line of argument about Hume's skepticism and naturalism and their intellectual context. It contains interesting and original discussions of early modern theories of mathematical knowledge, Locke's relation to Newton, and Hume's view of space and geometry. Concerning this last view, De Pierris rejects, and develops an alternative to, two influential interpretations: the “discrete space” interpretation due to Donald Baxter, James Franklin, and others; and the “actual parts” interpretation due to Thomas Holden. De Pierris proposes that, contrary to the “discrete space” interpretation, Hume does not aim to replace Euclidean geometry with an alternative, finitist geometry. Instead, he accepts Euclidean geometry as a demonstrative science, albeit an inexact one that cannot achieve the same degree of certainty as algebra and arithmetic. And contrary to the “actual parts” interpretation, a given spatially extended whole is not composed of a determinate number of indivisible minima whose existence is metaphysically prior to that of the whole. Instead, extended wholes have a kind of priority over the minima that compose them: minima are defined in terms of processes of diminution or division performed upon such wholes.Ideas, Evidence, and Method is essential reading not just for Hume scholars, but for all philosophers interested in early modern epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of science.I thank Andrew Chignell and Don Garrett for helpful feedback on earlier drafts.

Akihiko Shimizu

This essay explores the discourse of law that constitutes the controversial apprehension of Cicero's issuing of the ultimate decree of the Senate (senatus consultum ultimum) in Catiline. The play juxtaposes the struggle of Cicero, whose moral character and legitimacy are at stake in regards to the extra-legal uses of espionage, with the supposedly mischievous Catilinarians who appear to observe legal procedures more carefully throughout their plot. To mitigate this ambivalence, the play defends Cicero's actions by depicting the way in which Cicero establishes the rhetoric of public counsel to convince the citizens of his legitimacy in his unprecedented dealing with Catiline. To understand the contemporaneousness of Catiline, I will explore the way the play integrates the early modern discourses of counsel and the legal maxim of ‘better to suffer an inconvenience than mischief,’ suggesting Jonson's subtle sensibility towards King James's legal reformation which aimed to establish and deploy monarchical authority in the state of emergency (such as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605). The play's climactic trial scene highlights the display of the collected evidence, such as hand-written letters and the testimonies obtained through Cicero's spies, the Allbroges, as proof of Catiline's mischievous character. I argue that the tactical negotiating skills of the virtuous and vicious characters rely heavily on the effective use of rhetoric exemplified by both the political discourse of classical Rome and the legal discourse of Tudor and Jacobean England.

Clive Murray Norris

This chapter explores the overall costs of the Wesleyan Methodist chapel estate, and the impact which this financial challenge had upon the Connexion, drawing comparisons with other approaches including that of Anglicanism. Chapel construction triggered the movement’s 1760s financial crisis, and led to the decentralization of responsibility for chapel debt, though with some national oversight. This succeeded in keeping total chapel debt manageable. The scale and timing of chapel construction reflected membership growth, but in some regions did not keep pace. Resources were available, from the growing number of wealthier Methodists, and sometimes from Connexional grants. But there were tensions between the ambitions of local societies and concerns over debt, and between ensuring accessibility to the Gospel, and dependence on the wealthy. By 1800, chapel financing formed part of a complex Connexional financial regime.

Léonard Dudley

The seventeenth century had seen the creation of the first British Empire, but the beginning of the end for the Ottoman and Mughal Empires and the complete collapse of the Ming Empire. These events coincided with differences in the capacity of these states to realize fundamental transformations in their finances: (i) military spending (from small cavalry armies paid in kind to much larger forces armed with gunpowder weapons and paid in cash); (ii) fiscal structure (from direct taxation of production to indirect taxation of transactions) ; (iii) organizational control (from decentralized nobles’ households to centralized bureaucracies). In England, these fiscal transformations were facilitated by the increasing standardization of the written and spoken vernaculars. However, in Asia the ruling dynasties were handicapped by the high cost of decoding information written in classical literary languages . These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Joshua D. Rothman

How Banks Worked (and Sometimes Did Not Work) in the Early Republic Trying to understand the workings of American banking and finance before the Civil War can be baffling. There was no central bank and no national currency, but rather a mostly decentralized system of banks of varying sorts that circulated thousands of different paper banknotes throughout the country. Counterfeiting was widespread, banknote values fluctuated wildly and varied from place to place, and chains of credit and debt created through promissory notes and bills of exchange easily became byzantine. Fundamental instability was endemic to the economy, and only the exigencies of the war itself led policymakers to craft an economic order that began to resemble that of the modern world.