Pragmatic Orthodoxy

This collection of especially invited papers aims to explore the nature of the semantics/pragmatics interface by examining the extent to which the analysis of certain expressions or constructions can be pragmaticised. As the title of the collection implicates, it is anticipated that the theoretical and descriptive burden will move from semantics to pragmatics. However not all parts of a linguistic system will yield to a pragmatic treatment. The possibility remains that certain expressions or constructions are more economically and elegantly treated in semantic terms. Thus, this collection also contains papers that address the topic of 'making pragmatics semantic'. This collection contributes to the current interest in examining the division of labour between semantics and pragmatics in the analysis of meaning. All of the papers are at the forefront of knowledge in these matters and each contains original empirical analyses and/or novel theoretical perspectives. This book is relevant to courses in university departments of linguistics, modern languages, philosophy and psychology and to a wide range of university teaching and research.

Although there are many good books on the history of Jews in America and a smaller subset that focuses on aspects of Orthodox Judaism in contemporary times, no one, until now, has written an overview of how Orthodoxy in America has evolved over the centuries from the first arrivals in the 17th century to the present. This broad overview by Gurock (Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History, Yeshiva Univ.; Judaism's Encounter with American Sports) is distinctive in examining how Orthodox Jews have coped with the personal, familial, and communal challenges of religious freedom, economic opportunity, and social integration, as well as uncovering historical reactionary tensions to alternative Jewish movements in multicultural and pluralistic America. Gurock raises penetrating questions about the compatibility of modern culture with pious practices and sensitively explores the relationship of feminism to traditional Orthodox Judaism. There are several excellent reference sources on Orthodox Jews in America, e.g., Rabbi Moshe D. Sherman's outstanding Orthodox Judaism in America: A Biographical Dictionary and Sourcebook, to which this is an accessible and illuminating companion; recommended not only for serious readers on the topic but for general readers as well.David B. Levy, Touro Coll. Women's Seminary Lib., Brooklyn, NY Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Pragmatic Faith and the Tanzanian Lutheran Church: Bishop Erasto N. Kweka’s Life and Work examines the operations and organization of the Tanzanian Lutheran church through the life and times of its longest serving diocesan bishop, Erasto N. Kweka. Amy Stambach and Aikande Kwayu develop the concept of pragmatic faith, belief-in-practice, to analyze the integration of religious experience, institutionalism, and doctrine or orthodoxy. Pragmatic faith breaks down the lingering binary found in anthropological studies of Christianity between transcendental experience and pragmatic struggle, and between religious revival as rupture or continuity. Stambach and Kwayu analyze the instrumental use of religion in practice, as well as its socially mobilized potential for revelation and transformation. A key analytic agenda of this book is to illuminate how a church that retains the organizational and ritual forms of a European mission church "became" culturally localized over time and yet, paradoxically, also existed pre-colonially. Accordingly, this book offers detailed and ethnographically-grounded perspective on how leaders and laypeople affiliated with the Tanzanian Lutheran church connect the church with other significant institutions, not only the state and the government, but also descent groups, extended families, self-help groups, and existing civic organizations, in order to live meaningfully.

This volume presents Theodore Abu Qurrah’s apologetic Christian theology in dialogue with Islam. It explores the question of whether, in his attempt to convey orthodoxy in Arabic to the Muslim reader, Abu Qurrah diverged from creedal, doctrinal Christian theology and compromised its core content. A comprehensive study of the theology of Abu Qurrah and its relation to Islamic and pre-Islamic orthodox Melkite thought has not yet been pursued in modern scholarship. Awad addresses this gap in scholarship by offering a thorough analytic hermeneutics of Abu Qurrah’s apologetic thought, with specific attention to his theological thought on the Trinity and Christology. This study takes scholarship beyond attempts at editing and translating Abu Qurrah’s texts and offers scholars, students, and lay readers in the fields of Arabic Christianity, Byzantine theology, Christian-Muslim dialogues, and historical theology an unprecedented scientific study of Abu Qurrah’s theological mind.

This is a wide-ranging analysis of the internal dynamics of Irish republicanism between the outbreak of ‘the Troubles’ in 1969 and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Engaging a vast array of hitherto unused primary sources alongside original and re-used oral history interviews, ‘The Age-Old Struggle’ draws upon the words and writings of more than 250 Irish republicans. This book scrutinises the movement's historical and contemporary complexity, the variety of influences within Irish republicanism, and divergent republican responses at pivotal moments in the conflict. Yet it also assesses the centripetal forces which connected republican organisations through decades of struggle. Across five thematic chapters, ‘The Age-Old Struggle’ offers new insights into republicanism’s multi-layered interactions with the global ’68, tactical and strategic change, revolutionary socialism, feminism, and religion. Drawing on political periodicals, ephemera, and interviews with activists throughout the ranks of several republican groups, the book roots its analysis in republicanism’s temporal and spatial complexity. It contends that the cultural significance of place, interactions with class and revolutionary politics, and shifting intra-movement networks are essential to understanding the movement’s dynamics since 1969.

Argues that while contemporary American philosophies and philosophers of religion are proclaiming the end of theology, a neopragmatism has arrived to fill the void in meaning and moral fulfillment to which theology once supplied answers.

This title was first published in 2000. A timely look at the politics of agenda setting in relation to the car, under both the Conservative and Labour governments since the late 1980s.