This research addresses an emerging scholarship examining relations between media, religion, and culture in contemporary society. Whilst it acknowledges the value of this growing body of work, the study is based on a recognition that an overwhelming concern with the contemporary scene has resulted in a neglect of the history responsible for the conditions of the present. Given the prominence of America as both a source and an object of this scholarship, moreover, the particular national context in which the institutions (...) and practices of the US media have developed has been taken for granted somewhat. Oriented towards these perceived lacunae, this thesis examines the interaction between religion and film as an influence upon the development of American culture in the twentieth-century. The dissertation is divided into two main parts. The first of these is devoted to an extended discussion of the scholarly background to the research, and argues that the historical dimension of the interrelationship between religion and film in America is worthy of more attention than it has hitherto received. In particular, it stresses the fundamental importance of religion within the discourse of national identity in the United States, and posits the notion of a non-denominational American civil religion as a useful theoretical tool with which to examine Hollywood as a distinctively 'American' form of cinema. Part Two develops this position through a case study of The Birth of a Nation, directed by D.W. Griffith, and one of the most famous films of all time. Discussing the picture as a response to a crisis in American Protestantism, the study argues that the race controversy prompted by its Southern viewpoint was, to some extent, a function of Griffith's ambitions to revive the traditional religious bases of U.S. national identity via the medium of film. Furthermore, it suggests that the impact of Birth helped enact a broader transformation of American culture, wherein the cinema became instrumental in sustaining the belief that the United States was a nation uniquely favoured by Providence. (shrink)

This paper is divided into two sections. In the first section, I discuss "what is spirituality?" and in the section that follows, I examine some of the implications of my definition to the teaching of spirituality in an undergraduate business ethics course. For the purposes of this paper, spirituality is defined as the planned experience of blending integrity and integration through 1 - acceptance, 2 - commitment, 3 - reasonable choice, 4 - mindful action, and 5 -continuous dialog. This definition (...) is a work-in-progress and offered mainly as a point of departure rather than a final destination. (shrink)

This article intervenes in the debate on populism and democratic reform. Assuming that neither progressive populist counter-projects nor reforms broadening participation or deepening deliberation provide an immediate and realistic solution to the problematic political condition, the article engages with John Dewey’s work and presents a democratic praxis focused on problem solving as the most promising remedy to the populist challenge. The analysis shows that Dewey conceptualizes human action as inherently focused on problem solving, which allows him to think democracy as (...) an associated activity to articulate and solve problems through public inquiry. Drawing on the critique that powerful groups prevent democratic problem solving activities, I develop his argument that a problem-centred democratic project must attach itself to ‘wants and interests that are actually operating’. Against this backdrop, the pragmatic way forward to the repression of populist authoritarianism lies in the expansion of democratic problem solving, which, I conclude, can be realized by interweaving intelligent action into the habits of democratic parties. (shrink)

I present a persistent religious moral theory, known as divine command theory, which conflicts with liberal political thought. John Rawls's notion of public reason offers a framework for thinking about this conflict, but it has been criticized for demanding great restrictions on religious considerations in public deliberation. I argue that although Paul Kurtz is critical of organized religion, his epistemological suggestions and ethical theory offer a feasible way to build common moral ground between atheists, secularists, and theists, so long as (...) each maintains the important democratic value of toleration in the form of either fallibilism or skepticism. (shrink)

An important issue in the development of the American school of philosophy known as critical naturalism was whether the naturalistic vision implied a humanistic or a theistic interpretation of religion. Is the divine a creativity within nature but more than human effort, or is it the human vision of ideal possibilities and the effort to realize them? This issue is clarified through a study of the concept of the divine developed by the leading naturalist John Dewey in A Common Faith, (...) the misunderstanding of this book by Henry Nelson Wieman, and the discussion of this misunderstanding in the pages of Christian Century. The essay concludes that Wieman's misunderstanding of Dewey is instructive in that it reveals unintended possibilities in Dewey's thought. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper we introduce some of the main ideas of two great philosophers of democracy – Richard Rorty and Luce Irigaray. We show that in a similar manner both deal with an ethical ideal of community to be imagined, and achieved in the future. In the second part of this paper we present two ideas about democracy as an ethical and spiritual community – i.e., democracy as it relates to the idea of the »child« and (...) democracy as shared atmosphere of »breath«. Finally, in the third part of this paper, we elaborate on the future of democracy in an eschatological sense, and argue, as Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Luce Irigaray would claim, that if democracy is related to the process of our own divinization, then it is precisely within this process that with our creativity, imagination, and love we indeed can become unlimited and infinite. (shrink)

The Enlightenment marked a shift inmoral debates away from notions of sin and eviltoward the more secular concept of virtue basedin reason. Perhaps the most notable example ofsuch liberal thought can be found in JohnDewey's 1934 A Common Faith, where he arguesthat people should set aside bickering overreligious differences and work in a utilitarianspirit to achieve public good through science.Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, theChinese cultural revolution, and the Cold War'sthreat of mutually assured destruction haveinspired philosophers and theologians to revivethe (...) concept of evil to explain atrocities tooextreme to be incorporated into conventionalunderstandings of virtue and reason. In theirstruggle to explain the enormity of humancapacities for destruction, they have replacedtraditional religious definitions of evil witha more secular one: the construction anddefense of a systemic contempt for life.Assuming that bad consequences are simply theunintended result of good intentions, socialscientists have resisted employing such aconception of evil. Persisting in thisassumption may prevent us from seeing theperversity of the liberal economicjustification for promoting and perpetuatingdestructive tendencies in the industrialagricultural system. This paper seeks tooperationalize a conception of evil and toapply it to policy debates surrounding the 1985Food Security Act in the hope of evaluating oursociety's inability to resolve social andenvironmental consequences generated byindustrial agriculture. (shrink)

According to Darwin's theory of evolution, John Dewey wanted to change the way we look at the world around us. In the pre-modern days, he strived to achieve the promise of modernity, which was progress and advancement in all fields. Dewey not only foresaw such a step, but also studied the way through it. In this article, we begin with the years when Dewey was an ardent Christian, and deal with the time when he became fascinated with the evolutionary sciences (...) and developed his theory of "experience" with a rationalist approach. According to Dewey's naturalistic approach to man, we are confronted with religious experiences that, in the evolutionary process, are a response to basic human needs and have emerged in the context of different cultures in the form of different religions. In Dewey's view, "religious experience" is a personal dream of man. God, the Hereafter, religion and supernatural things are of this kind. These things are born of human exchange and adaptation to his environment. So for Dewey, there are no other worlds and worlds with different levels or parallel worlds that have recently been expressed on the basis of scientific hypotheses. Spirituality, religion and morality are all natural, experimental, real and of course valuable. Dewey considers man as an organism among millions of other living beings and in connection with them, and deals with the application and function of religious experiences in daily life. (shrink)

This article considers whether there exists today a movement of similar strength to the synthetic 'new theoretical movement' of the mid-1980s. The author argues that one main trend in sociological theory today is the notion of creativity and efforts to understand it conceptually. The contemporary growth of contingency, it is claimed, is closely related to this creative perspective. After examining Parsons's notion of 'double contingency', the article suggests that neither rationality nor normativity alone is able to dampen recognition of the (...) vicissitudes attached to both personal destinies and social evolution. The author analyses the axis of structure and action, theories of history and evolution, together with the relationship between modernity and reflexivity, in order to substantiate the claim that creativity constitutes a trend today. This trend is then related to another, the cognitive approach, and the author proposes some ideas to bring them closer. Finally, a hypothesis to explain the current stress on creativity is suggested. (shrink)

Critically engages the work of American philosopher Richard J. Bernstein.

This paper explores two different strategies that may be useful to give substance to Deweyan democracy’s claim that in order for democratic associations to develop into communities, citizens need to learn how to conduct inquiry in a social setting. The two strategies reflect a principal division among views of public deliberation. The first strategy, the separation strategy, closely resembles Rawls’ political liberalism by advocating the development of a separate sphere of public deliberation, guided by factual and normative assumptions that we (...) need not accept anywhere outside that sphere. Comprehensive doctrines are to be held outside of public deliberation, a move which makes possible a rather straightforward application of Dewey’s theory of inquiry. The second strategy, the embeddedness strategy, stresses the fact that public deliberation is inevitably embedded in broader spheres of social life, and that the development towards community must be piecemeal, and go hand in hand with developments in social life as a whole. I argue that there are weighty reasons for doubting the feasibility of the separation strategy, and I also argue that these reasons are relevant for our evaluation of all versions of the separation strategy, including political liberalism. I conclude that one of Deweyan democracy’s most important assets, which deserves further examination, is its insight that reflection on public deliberation needs to take its embedded character into account. (shrink)