Religion

The Discovery of Angkor

For nearly a hundred years, travellers and archaeologists have been investigating the mysterious ruins of Angkor. Today, writes Michael Sullivan, much of the mystery has been dispelled; but these relics of a vanished civilization still preserve their beauty and dignity.

The Theism of Lord Balfour

Lord Balfour, then Foreign Secretary, announced that he viewed with favour a national home for the Jews in Palestine. I.T. Naamani examines the philosophical writings of a remarkable British statesman.

The First Vatican Council

K. Theodore Hoppen describes how the victory of the ultramontanes in 1870 meant that for a considerable time the largest Church in Christendom adopted an attitude hostile to the modern world.

The First Vatican Council, 1869-1870

The Vatican Council now in session, writes John Raymond, faces many issues very different from that which dominated its predecessor nearly a century ago.

Dura Europos

Findings at a desert site in eastern Syria shed light on pagan, Jewish and early Christian religions.

The Huguenots: A Study of a Minority, Part II

J.B. Morrall offers his study of the events that led to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and of the French Calvinists’ fortunes thereafter, both at home and abroad, down to the beginning of the present century.

Lamennais: A Liberal Catholic

Only in a free political society, declared Lamennais and his followers, could nineteenth-century Catholics hope to evangelize the new age. Complete religious liberty, with disestablishment of the Church, freedom of education and of the press, and the decentralization of governmental authority, writes J.B. Morrall, were among the aims they advocated. His views having been condemned by the Vatican and himself denounced by conservative critics as “Robespierre in a surpliceLamennais at length abandoned the faith to which he had devoted so much talent and energy.

The Mormons in America: The Story of a Frontier

When Mark Twain said of the Mormons, 'Their religion is singular but their wives are plural' he expressed the sum of what is generally known about them. Yet the Mormon story deserves to be better known. It illuminates one side of the development of a pioneer society, and forms a commentary upon many of the main themes of American history.