The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States with 15.8 million members. It has, in the span of two decades, transformed itself into a fundamentalist denomination and become far more politically active. The traditional Baptist principles of priesthood of the believer, congregational autonomy, and commitment to separation of church and state have been significantly compromised as the denomination has embraced religious fundamentalism. I situate the SBC historically in the realms of both Protestant faiths and politics, while including within that analysis the politics internal to the Convention itself. This raises important questions about relationships between church and state, religion and politics. Of these questions, I treat as most consequential those concerning the accommodation of fundamentalist religion within a framework of religious and civil liberties in a pluralist democracy.

While the English-speaking world explored the possibilities of liberalism, their Catholic neighbors to the South continued to develop the political and social theories developed by St. Thomas Aquinas. The principles and values of Thomism continued to inform the organizing of empires and the distribution of justice. This work focuses on the early modern reforms of Thomism, particularly the Jesuit influence, and how those reforms were practiced within the Spanish Inquisition. Relying on philosophical texts of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as well as inquisitorial archival materials, this work considers both the confessional relationship and the process of reconciliation within a Thomistic framework. Rather than a juggernaut of death, as the Black Legend would suggest, or a vehicle of discipline, as Foucault argued, the handbooks used within the Holy Office suggest a commitment to the corporate and corporeal principles of St. Thomas Aquinas. While not an apology for the Inquisition, this research suggests that the Holy Office may offer a valuable alternative to liberal jurisprudence, particularly in cases when social connections are more pertinent than individual rights.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1967. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

In this thesis, I outline the normative relevance of religious political parties as carriers of values in the context of contemporary political theory. The central argument of my thesis is that religious political parties are, in ideal terms, vital institutional tools for channelling religious claims into the public political realm of liberal democratic polities, in a way that favours democracy. The reason for my claim is that there is a set of normative criteria that all political parties ought to comply with. These include loyal opposition (i.e. the endorsement of the constitutional and institutional framework in which parties operate), acknowledgement and respect of political pluralism and commitment to pursuing power only through legal means. These normative criteria are grounded in the idea that political parties are “bilingual”, i.e. they occupy a unique position between civil society and public political realm. By complying with these criteria political parties can contribute in channelling and moderating religious and other perfectionist claims in a way that renders them suitable for democratic politics. Furthermore I argue that religious political parties are best incorporated, in ideal terms, by a regime of nonconstitutional pluralism, where no religious faith is officially recognized in the constitution but the political guarantees exist for the expression of religious views in the public political realm through religious political parties. Finally, I examine two specific religious parties, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi - AKP) in Turkey and the former Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana - DC) in Italy, in order to assess to which extent they have complied with the normative criteria of party politics and, therefore, contributed in enhancing democracy in their respective polities.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Advisor: Dr. Jeffery J. Mondak, Florida State University, College of Social Sciences, Dept. of Political Science. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 19, 2005). Document formatted into pages; contains x, 134 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis concerns the reason-giving aspect of legitimacy. What reasons must be used to justify coercive laws, if citizens are to be respected as morally free and equal, in the face of their many moral, religious, and philosophical disagreements? Many theorists endorse 'political liberalism', according to which laws must be justified to all citizens by reasons that they can accept. This claim has been interpreted in two conflicting ways. The dominant view, which I call 'public reason liberalism', holds that laws must be justified by appeal to a set of values that all citizens can share, despite their many disagreements. In the first part of the thesis, I argue that this view should be rejected in favour of 'justificatory liberalism', which holds that laws must be conclusively justified to each citizen on the basis of all of their reasons. I also respond to the challenge of the 'right reasons view', which rejects the claim that laws need to be justified to citizens by reasons they can accept. Several prominent objections to political liberalism claim that it is incompatible with committed religious belief. In the second part of the thesis I investigate whether this is the case with regard to Christianity, by engaging with Christian theology. I argue that many of the common objections to political liberalism fail, but so do certain arguments that aim to show that Christians ought to endorse public reason liberalism on the basis of their religious beliefs. Nonetheless, Christians can accept political liberalism, and justificatory liberalism in particular. The requirements of justificatory liberalism and individuals' Christian beliefs will sometimes conflict, however. Justificatory liberals should accept that individuals can sometimes justifiably prioritise the latter over the former. My overall argument is that justificatory liberalism offers the best account of the reason-giving aspect of legitimacy, and that this is partly shown by its compatibility with Christian theology.

Karl Marx's philosophy of writing demands his readers help develop his theory by questioning its gaps and contradictions. A crucial question concerns Marx's relation to his Jewishness. In "On the Jewish Question," Judaism stands for civil society and the transformative power of practical need, Christianity for the "political state" and spiritual solutions to material problems. Human emancipation will spring not from politics but "the negation of Judaism": recognizing and overcoming barriers to fully human existence. Marx thus endorses a "Jewish" viewpoint which senses reality as the Hebrew bible does. The Torah conceives human beings in dialogue with God as indispensible partners in creating the world. We are called to act; our action matters. Marx criticizes the Greeks and most Western philosophers for their static, contemplative view of reality. Any ontology which imposes a truth beyond social relations privileges some people and needs, excluding others. By rejecting God, Marx discredits the God's-eye view that leads to false universals. He retains the structure of dialogue between the species and its evolving needs. Hegel had offered the young Marx a dialectical approach to reality, but Marx eventually found Hegel's ontology too Greek. Rather than simply reversing Hegel, though, Marx corrects him as though he were subject to a Jewish worldview. Marx's method resembles the traditional Jewish style of hermeneutics called midrash. It performs the same function: restoring sense to a chaotic world as glimpsed from a particular tradition. The breakdown of social meaning is central to Marx's theory of alienation. The Jewish theme of exile explains Marx's urgency. A group is exiled when society constructs reality to preclude it from expressing or acting upon the needs that constitute its identity. A society in exile frustrates the realization of human purposes. Both workers and capitalist society are exiled. To return, they must believe the world can become human--as their experience under capitalism shows it cannot. Marx's personal exile is that his audience lacks the Jewish context to recognize his theory of how we become free. Theorists continue his work by listening to people in exile and working out different roads to emancipation.

It is not surprising that most detailed analysis of parliamentary politics during the mid to later 1640s has been directed at the so-called Independent Party. In particular, the work of Mrs. Pearl and David Underdown has achieved a great deal in revealing a clearer picture of the character, personnel and objectives of that party; and in so doing they have also improved our general knowledge of party politics at Westminster. Even so, the detailed character of this recent research has created the need for a similar analysis of those politicians or grandees who constituted the Presbyterian Party. No clear appreciation of party divisions in the two Houses of the parliament is possible without restoring a balance in our understanding of both parties. Indeed, I feel that such a study is essential to enable us to reappraise certain interpretations and to propose different ones where concentration on one area of party politics has resulted in distortion or misleading conclusions. Consequently it has been my purpose in this study of the Presbyterian Party to follow its career from late 1643 to the early autumn of 1647, as well as revealing something of the political background to the alliance of the Scots Comissioners and the Earl of Essex's group. I have also sought to illustrate the conflict in its broadest context by investigating not only how the character of the two 'parties' was affected by the parliamentary tactics they employed, but also the extra-parliamentary contacts and strategy of the Presbyterian party or alliance. Without an understanding of political and religious developments in the City of London, and the intricacies of Montereul's mission, only a partial view of the activities of such leaders as Densil Helles and Sir Philip Stapleton would be obtained. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the thesis, and attempts to provide a critical indication of the current state of research into the development of parties in the Long Parliament. I recognise the significance of local and regional interests as factors affecting political activities at Westminster, whilst emphasising the importance of a developing national consciousness amongst the 'grandees' of both Houses in the formation of party groups. I also examine the emergence of religious terms to describe these groups, seeking to ascertain how and why they were adopted and to what extent they reflected the importance of religious differences as the basis of party divisions. The application of religious terms to political groups is traced to royalist confusion, clerical concern for a settled church government in both the Assembly and the City of London, and in particular the preoccupation of the Scottish allies with presbyterianism. Parliamentary sources tend to restrict the political use of the terms 'presbyterian' and 'independent' to the years 1646 and 1647, but I show that the realignment of groups at Westminster which provided the reality behind these terms occurred considerably earlier in the autumn of 1644. Finally I include in Chapter 1 a brief analysis of the Earl of Essex's group or party designed to reveal the political role of the earl and the character of his relationship with his leading advisers in the House of Commons.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 141-170).