Matthew Rowley – författare

This book explores how polarised interpretations of America’s past influence the present and vice versa. A focus on competing Protestant reactions to President Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan evidences a fundamental divide over how America should remember historical racism, sexism and exploitation. Additionally, these Protestants disagree over how the past influences present injustice and equality. The 2020 killing of George Floyd forced these rival histories into the open. Rowley proposes that recovering a complex view of the past, confessing the bad and embracing the good, might help Americans have a shared memory that can bridge polarisation and work to secure justice and equality.

An accessible and timely book, this is essential reading for those concerned with the vexed relationship of religion and politics in the United States, including students and scholars in the fields of Protestantism, history, political science, religious studies and sociology.

This book explores how polarised interpretations of America’s past influence the present and vice versa. A focus on competing Protestant reactions to President Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ slogan evidences a fundamental divide over how America should remember historical racism, sexism and exploitation. Additionally, these Protestants disagree over how the past influences present injustice and equality. The 2020 killing of George Floyd forced these rival histories into the open. Rowley proposes that recovering a complex view of the past, confessing the bad and embracing the good, might help Americans have a shared memory that can bridge polarisation and work to secure justice and equality.

An accessible and timely book, this is essential reading for those concerned with the vexed relationship of religion and politics in the United States, including students and scholars in the fields of Protestantism, history, political science, religious studies and sociology.

This volume examines how historical beliefs about the supernatural were used to justify violence, secure political authority or extend toleration in both the medieval and early modern periods.

Contributors explore miracles, political authority and violence in Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, various Protestant groups, Judaism, Islam and the local religious beliefs of Pacific Islanders who interacted with Christians. The chapters are geographically expansive, with contributions ranging from confessional conflict in Poland-Lithuania to the conquest of Oceania. They examine various types of conflict such as confessional struggles, conversion attempts, assassination and war, as well as themes including diplomacy, miraculous iconography, toleration, theology and rhetoric. Together, the chapters explore the appropriation of accounts of miraculous violence that are recorded in sacred texts to reveal what partisans claimed God did in conflict, and how they claimed to know. The volume investigates theories of justified warfare, changing beliefs about the supernatural with the advent of modernity and the perceived relationship between human and divine agency.

Miracles, Political Authority and Violence in Medieval and Early Modern History is of interest to scholars and students in several fields including religion and violence, political and military history, and theology and the reception of sacred texts in the medieval and early modern world.

This volume examines how historical beliefs about the supernatural were used to justify violence, secure political authority or extend toleration in both the medieval and early modern periods.

Contributors explore miracles, political authority and violence in Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, various Protestant groups, Judaism, Islam and the local religious beliefs of Pacific Islanders who interacted with Christians. The chapters are geographically expansive, with contributions ranging from confessional conflict in Poland-Lithuania to the conquest of Oceania. They examine various types of conflict such as confessional struggles, conversion attempts, assassination and war, as well as themes including diplomacy, miraculous iconography, toleration, theology and rhetoric. Together, the chapters explore the appropriation of accounts of miraculous violence that are recorded in sacred texts to reveal what partisans claimed God did in conflict, and how they claimed to know. The volume investigates theories of justified warfare, changing beliefs about the supernatural with the advent of modernity and the perceived relationship between human and divine agency.

Miracles, Political Authority and Violence in Medieval and Early Modern History is of interest to scholars and students in several fields including religion and violence, political and military history, and theology and the reception of sacred texts in the medieval and early modern world.