Explaining the English Revolution studies the years 1649 to 1653, from regicide to the establishment of the Cromwellian Commonwealth, during which time English writers 'took stock' of a disordered England stripped of the traditional ideas of political, moral, and social order and considered the possibilities for a politically and religiously reordered state.

Discussions of any religion can easily raise passions. But arguments tend to become even more heated when the religion under discussion is characterized as new. Divisions around the study of new religious movements (NRMs), or cults, or nontraditional or alternative or emergent religions are so acute that there is even controversy over what to call them. John Saliba strives to bring balance to these discussions by offering perspectives on new religions from different academic perspectives: history, psychology, sociology, law, theology, and counseling. This approach provides rich descriptions of a broad range of movements while demonstrating how the differing aims of the disciplines can create much of the controversy around NRMs. The new second edition has been updated and revised throughout and includes a new foreword by noted historian of religion, J. Gordon Melton. For classes in religion or the social sciences, or for interested individuals, Understanding New Religious Movements offers the most objective introduction possible.

"What society considers blasphemy - a verbal assault against the sacred - is a litmus test of the standards it believes to be necessary to preserve unity, order, and morality. Society has always condemned as blasphemy what it regards as an abuse of liberty." "Looking across the centuries - from Moses to Salman Rushdie - at writings and speech that societies have and have not tolerated, Leonard Levy demonstrates that throughout history, prosecutions for blasphemy have been tinged with political considerations. Socrates, Aristotle, Jesus, Michael Servetus, Giordano Bruno, George Fox, William Penn, Thomas Paine, Edward Moxon, Roberto Rossellini, Martin Scorsese, and the 1976 editor of the British journal Gay News are among those whose "blasphemies" Levy examines in their historical contexts." "Professor Levy traces the varied meanings of the offense in Western law - from the ancient Hebrew crime of cursing God by name to the modern crime of ridiculing God or professing atheistical principles that insult the religious feelings of Christians. He explores the blurring of meaning that occurred as at various times blasphemy became nearly indistinguishable from heresy, idolatry, sacrilege, nonconformity, sedition, treason, profanity, obscenity, and breach of peace. He shows, too, how frequently and ferociously Christians have persecuted each other for blasphemy, with Catholics pursuing and killing one another over differences of interpretation, then Protestants - all of whom once seemed blasphemous to Catholics - turning on each other, and the more established denominations punishing Unitarians, Baptists, Quakers, and Presbyterians." "We see how in the United States, where blasphemy was initially denounced in sermons and statutes, prosecutions became less frequent and more isolated as people grew increasingly indifferent to aberrant beliefs and First Amendment freedoms were expanded by the courts. Although prosecutions ceased entirely in 1971 in America and in 1979 in England, Levy argues that the threat of prosecution is not dead. The laws still exist, and the U.S. Supreme Court has never found a blasphemy law to be unconstitutional." "Levy also makes it clear that while past sanctions against blasphemy have inhibited all manner of cultural, political, scientific, and literary expression, we also pay a price for the current extraordinary expansion in the scope of permissible speech. We have become, he says, not only a free society but a "numb" society. We are beyond outrage."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Bearded bomb-throwers, self-indulgent nihilists, dangerous subversives.these characteristic clichés of anarchists in the popular imagination are often reproduced in the cinema. In Film and the Anarchist Imagination, the first comprehensive survey of anarchism in film, Richard Porton deconstructs such stereotypes while offering an authoritative account of films featuring anarchist characters and motifs. From the early cinema of Griffith and René Clair, to the work of Godard, Lina Wertmüller, Lizzie Borden and Ken Loach, Porton analyzes portrayals of anarchism in film, presenting commentaries and critiques of such classics as Zéro de Conduite, Tout Va Bien, and Love and Anarchy. In addition, he provides an excellent guide to the complex traditions of anarchist thought, from Bakunin and Kropotkin to Emma Goldman and Murray Bookchin, disclosing a rich historical legacy that encompasses the Paris Commune, the Haymarket martyrs, the anarcho-syndicalists of the Spanish Civil War, as well as more familiar contemporary avatars like the Situationists and the enragés of May 1968.

The author seeks to clarify early Quaker views and explain how Friends came to differ so significantly in their beliefs from other English Protestants. By examining the Baptist-Quaker relationship in particular, he is able both to identify a primary link between the two and, and the same time, discover explanations for some of their dramatic differences. He draws on scores of previously unused tracts and manuscripts produced by the Baptist-Quaker disputes - materials which, in setting forth accusations, clarifications, and rebuttals, shed new light on the beliefs of the antagonists.