Protestant Modernity

A half century after its founding in London in 1844, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) became the first NGO to effectively push a modernization agenda around the globe. Soon followed by a sister organization, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), founded in 1855, the Y movement defined its global mission in 1889. Although their agendas have been characterized as predominantly religious, both the YMCA and YWCA were also known for their new vision of a global civil society and became major agents in the worldwide dissemination of modern “Western” bodies of knowledge. The YMCA’s and YWCA’s “secular” social work was partly rooted in the Anglo-American notions of the “social gospel” that became popular during the 1890s. The Christian lay organizations’ vision of a “Protestant Modernity” increasingly globalized their “secular” social work that transformed notions of science, humanitarianism, sports, urban citizenship, agriculture, and gender relations. Spreading Protestant Modernity shows how the YMCA and YWCA became crucial in circulating various forms of knowledge and practices that were related to this vision, and how their work was co-opted by governments and rival NGOs eager to achieve similar ends. The studies assembled in this collection explore the influence of the YMCA’s and YWCA’s work on highly diverse societies in South, Southeast, and East Asia; North America; Africa; and Eastern Europe. Focusing on two of the most prominent representative groups within the Protestant youth, social service, and missionary societies (the so-called “Protestant International”), the book provides new insights into the evolution of global civil society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and its multifarious, seemingly secular, legacies for today’s world. Spreading Protestant Modernity offers a compelling read for those interested in global history, the history of colonialism and decolonization, the history of Protestant internationalism, and the trajectories of global civil society. While each study is based on rigorous scholarship, the discussion and analyses are in accessible language that allows everyone from undergraduate students to advanced academics to appreciate the Y movement’s role in social transformations across the world.

""It seems to have been so difficult to detect confessional influences on social theory that it has become a dogma of faith that there are none."" "So says Anthony Carroll in the introduction to his remarkable book, Protestant Modernity: Weber, Secularisation, and Protestantism, in which his ringing and perspicacious dissent reveals that conveniently long-held "dogma" to be false. Carroll frames his study with a multifaceted understanding of secularisation in the broader context of nineteenth-century liberal Protestantism. He reconstructs Max Weber's original writings to highlight Protestant motifs, reviews current secularisation theories, and settles debates about contested meanings of secularisation. This multidisciplinary volume will be essential reading for students and scholars of theology, Weber, and the sociology of religion, for years to come." --Book Jacket.

A half century after its founding in London in 1844, the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) became the first NGO to effectively push a modernization agenda around the globe. Soon followed by a sister organization, the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA), founded in 1855, the Y movement defined its global mission in 1889. Although their agendas have been characterized as predominantly religious, both the YMCA and YWCA were also known for their new vision of a global civil society and became major agents in the worldwide dissemination of modern “Western” bodies of knowledge. The YMCA’s and YWCA’s “secular” social work was partly rooted in the Anglo-American notions of the “social gospel” that became popular during the 1890s. The Christian lay organizations’ vision of a “Protestant Modernity” increasingly globalized their “secular” social work that transformed notions of science, humanitarianism, sports, urban citizenship, agriculture, and gender relations. Spreading Protestant Modernity shows how the YMCA and YWCA became crucial in circulating various forms of knowledge and practices that were related to this vision, and how their work was co-opted by governments and rival NGOs eager to achieve similar ends. The studies assembled in this collection explore the influence of the YMCA’s and YWCA’s work on highly diverse societies in South, Southeast, and East Asia; North America; Africa; and Eastern Europe. Focusing on two of the most prominent representative groups within the Protestant youth, social service, and missionary societies (the so-called “Protestant International”), the book provides new insights into the evolution of global civil society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and its multifarious, seemingly secular, legacies for today’s world. Spreading Protestant Modernity offers a compelling read for those interested in global history, the history of colonialism and decolonization, the history of Protestant internationalism, and the trajectories of global civil society. While each study is based on rigorous scholarship, the discussion and analyses are in accessible language that allows everyone from undergraduate students to advanced academics to appreciate the Y movement’s role in social transformations across the world.

Protestant Theology and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century Netherlands examines how Dutch Protestant thinkers and theologicans met the challenges of the rapidly modernizing world around them. It shows that the nineteenth-century saw theology fundamentally transformed and reinvented in a variety of ways. Enlightenment values were fiercely attacked by orthodox Pietists but embraced by 'modern' theologians. Positions were not fixed and theologians has to work hard to maintain their intellectual integrity. Jewish Isaac da Costa converted to Christianity and fulminated against the Zeitgeist. Allard Pierson, who in his youth had been under the spell of Da Costa, resigned from his ministry and adopted an 'agnostic' stance. Abraham Kuyper modernized theology and politics, by laying the foundations of 'pillarization' (the segmented social structures based on differences in religion and worldview) of Dutch society. Abraham Kuenen revolutionized the study of the Old Testament, and Protestant theologians made ground-breaking contributions to the emerging science of religion. This book used in-depth studies of a small number of significant and influential Protestant thinkers to analyse how they addressed specific modern transformation processes such as political modernization, the pluralization of world views, and the emergence of critical historical scholarship. It also considers the significant Dutch contribution to the historical-critical study of the Bible, and the emergence of the modern comparative study of religion.

Throughout history, speech and storytelling have united communities and mobilized movements. Protestant Textuality and the Tamil Modern examines this phenomenon in Tamil-speaking South India over the last three centuries, charting the development of political oratory and its influence on society. Supplementing his narrative with thorough archival work, Bernard Bate begins with Protestant missionaries' introduction of the sermonic genre and takes the reader through its local vernacularization. What originally began as a format of religious speech became an essential political infrastructure used to galvanize support for new social imaginaries, from Indian independence to Tamil nationalism. Completed by a team of Bate's colleagues, this ethnography marries linguistic anthropology to performance studies and political history, illuminating new geographies of belonging in the modern era.

On the 500th anniversary of Luther’s theses, a landmark history of the revolutionary faith that shaped the modern world. "Ryrie writes that his aim 'is to persuade you that we cannot understand the modern age without understanding the dynamic history of Protestant Christianity.' To which I reply: Mission accomplished." –Jon Meacham, author of American Lion and Thomas Jefferson Five hundred years ago a stubborn German monk challenged the Pope with a radical vision of what Christianity could be. The revolution he set in motion toppled governments, upended social norms and transformed millions of people's understanding of their relationship with God. In this dazzling history, Alec Ryrie makes the case that we owe many of the rights and freedoms we have cause to take for granted--from free speech to limited government--to our Protestant roots. Fired up by their faith, Protestants have embarked on courageous journeys into the unknown like many rebels and refugees who made their way to our shores. Protestants created America and defined its special brand of entrepreneurial diligence. Some turned to their bibles to justify bold acts of political opposition, others to spurn orthodoxies and insight on their God-given rights. Above all Protestants have fought for their beliefs, establishing a tradition of principled opposition and civil disobedience that is as alive today as it was 500 years ago. In this engrossing and magisterial work, Alec Ryrie makes the case that whether or not you are yourself a Protestant, you live in a world shaped by Protestants.

He shows how Chinese Protestants, with a distinctive vision for constituting China as a modern nation-state, contributed to the dissolution of the imperial regime, enjoyed unprecedented popularity following the 1911 revolution, and then saw their dreams for social and political change dashed.".

In shaping the modern academy and in setting the agenda of modern Christian theology, few institutions have been as influential as the German universities of the nineteenth century. This book examines the rise of the modern German university from the standpoint of the Protestant theological faculty, focusing especially on the University of Berlin (1810), Prussia's flagship university in the nineteenth century. In contradistinction to historians of modern higher education who often overlook theology, and to theologians who are frequently inattentive to the social and institutional contexts of religious thought, Thomas Albert Howard argues that modern university development and the trajectory of modern Protestant theology in Germany should be understood as interrelated phenomena.