Beheading the Saint

2016-12-19 History

Author : Geneviève Zubrzycki
Release : 2016-12-19
Genre : History
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 68X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Beheading the Saint by : Geneviève Zubrzycki

Download or read book Beheading the Saint written by Geneviève Zubrzycki. This book was released on 2016-12-19. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The province of Quebec used to be called the priest-ridden province by its Protestant neighbors in Canada. During the 1960s, Quebec became radically secular, directly leading to its evolution as a welfare state with lay social services. What happened to cause this abrupt change? Genevieve Zubrzycki gives us an elegant and penetrating history, showing that a key incident sets up the transformation. Saint John the Baptist is the patron saint of French Canadians, and, until 1969, was subject of annual celebrations with a parade in Montreal. That year, the statue of St. John was toppled by protestors, breaking off the head from the body. Here, then is the proximate cause: the beheading of a saint, a symbolic death to be sure, which caused the parades to disappear and other modes of national celebration to take their place. The beheading of the saint was part and parcel of the so-called Quiet Revolution, a period of far-reaching social, economic, political, and cultural transformations. Quebec society and the identity of its French-speaking members drastically reinvented themselves with the rejection of Catholicism. Zubrzycki is already acknowledged as a leading authority on nationalism and religion; this book will significantly enlarge her stature by showing the extent to which a core feature of the Quiet Revolution was an aesthetic revolt. A new generation rejected the symbols of French Canada, redefining national identity in the process (and as a process) and providing momentum for institutional reforms. We learn that symbols have causal force, generating chains of significations which can transform a Catholic-dominated conservative society into a leftist, forward-looking, secular society."

Beheading the Saint

2016-12-19 Religion

Author : Geneviève Zubrzycki
Release : 2016-12-19
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 71X/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Beheading the Saint by : Geneviève Zubrzycki

Download or read book Beheading the Saint written by Geneviève Zubrzycki. This book was released on 2016-12-19. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through much of its existence, Québec’s neighbors called it the “priest-ridden province.” Today, however, Québec society is staunchly secular, with a modern welfare state built on lay provision of social services—a transformation rooted in the “Quiet Revolution” of the 1960s. In Beheading the Saint, Geneviève Zubrzycki studies that transformation through a close investigation of the annual Feast of St. John the Baptist of June 24. The celebrations of that national holiday, she shows, provided a venue for a public contesting of the dominant ethno-Catholic conception of French Canadian identity and, via the violent rejection of Catholic symbols, the articulation of a new, secular Québécois identity. From there, Zubrzycki extends her analysis to the present, looking at the role of Québécois identity in recent debates over immigration, the place of religious symbols in the public sphere, and the politics of cultural heritage—issues that also offer insight on similar debates elsewhere in the world.

Beheading Hydra

2021-07-27 Religion

Author : Fr Dwight Longenecker
Release : 2021-07-27
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 900/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Beheading Hydra by : Fr Dwight Longenecker

Download or read book Beheading Hydra written by Fr Dwight Longenecker. This book was released on 2021-07-27. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Never before has humanity existed in a culture that rejects belief in a transcendent power. Previous cultures -- even when rent by bitter disagreements -- shared a common belief that a greater force stood above the material realm. But when one side acknowledges an ultimate source of truth while the other side denies it, debate is dead, and mutual understanding is impossible. So claims Fr. Dwight Longenecker in his most captivating book yet, Beheading Hydra. Longenecker shows how, like the mythical serpentine beast with myriad writhing and venomous heads, atheism manifests itself today through sixteen "isms" that cloak the actions of the antichrist, who seethes with pure hatred of God and His truth. Because any good battle plan calls for a thorough knowledge of the enemy, Fr. Longenecker boldly exposes the philosophies behind scientism, materialism, utilitarianism, sentimental humanitarianism, and more, explaining how they became the core assumptions of our culture and how they are, in turn, corrupting the politics and power structures of the world. Beheading Hydra brilliantly catalogs the alluring and seductive deceptions of each ism to help you see how they are corroding the very foundations of Western civilization and entrapping countless faithful Christians. Best of all, the book lays out a plan of action to behead the Hydra that calls for neither direct conflict nor even dialogue, but creative subversion. You'll discover what this means along with the powerful and practical actions you and your friends can take now. You'll also learn how to acquire the grace needed to see clearly the problem -- and the solutions. It is ordinary men and women who become extraordinary heroes in this battle against Satan, explains Fr. Longenecker. Only by the light of our lives will we defeat this darkness. Debate and dialogue are now pointless. Our lives are our only remaining argument.

The Crosses of Auschwitz

2009-10-15 Social Science

Author : Geneviève Zubrzycki
Release : 2009-10-15
Genre : Social Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 051/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis The Crosses of Auschwitz by : Geneviève Zubrzycki

Download or read book The Crosses of Auschwitz written by Geneviève Zubrzycki. This book was released on 2009-10-15. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer and fall of 1998, ultranationalist Polish Catholics erected hundreds of crosses outside Auschwitz, setting off a fierce debate that pitted Catholics and Jews against one another. While this controversy had ramifications that extended well beyond Poland’s borders, Geneviève Zubrzycki sees it as a particularly crucial moment in the development of post-Communist Poland’s statehood and its changing relationship to Catholicism. In The Crosses of Auschwitz, Zubrzycki skillfully demonstrates how this episode crystallized latent social conflicts regarding the significance of Catholicism in defining “Polishness” and the role of anti-Semitism in the construction of a new Polish identity. Since the fall of Communism, the binding that has held Polish identity and Catholicism together has begun to erode, creating unease among ultranationalists. Within their construction of Polish identity also exists pride in the Polish people’s long history of suffering. For the ultranationalists, then, the crosses at Auschwitz were not only symbols of their ethno-Catholic vision, but also an attempt to lay claim to what they perceived was a Jewish monopoly over martyrdom. This gripping account of the emotional and aesthetic aspects of the scene of the crosses at Auschwitz offers profound insights into what Polishness is today and what it may become.

Decapitation and Sacrifice

2017 Art

Author : Barbara Baert
Release : 2017
Genre : Art
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : /5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Decapitation and Sacrifice by : Barbara Baert

Download or read book Decapitation and Sacrifice written by Barbara Baert. This book was released on 2017. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The anthology Decapitation and Sacrifice is the result of an interdisciplinary project on the phenomenon of the decapitated Head of Saint John the Baptist in its exegetical context, in the material culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and finally in more recent approaches regarding medium studies. Several specialists and scholars from these fields were invited to share their most recent conclusions, thus contributing to our understanding of one of the most peculiar events, artifacts and phenomena in West: the rise and fall of a male head as subject of martyrdom, devotion and artistic expression. What emerges from these collected essays is a nuanced understanding of the beheading and presentation of Saint John. We begin with the biblical account, already finding multiple layers of exegetical meaning, with a focus on John as a Christ figure. As the narrative is adapted into other textual and visual forms, its symbolism is transformed, deepened, or extended in new ways relating to medieval and early modern spirituality, morality, performance and representation. What John's disembodied head symbolically embodies shifts as we move from one medium to another, and from one geographic region to another. And, within those broader categories, meaningful distinctions can be made between differences in details such as the presence or absence of a platter, the use of specific terminology, the contents of inscriptions, the characterization of Herodias and her daughter, specifics of stage directions, even the parting of John's beard and the portrayal of his eyes as open or closed or half-closed - to name but a few. The close analysis of these and other details that the contributors to this volume provide tell us both about the symbolic potential of John's beheading and about how the textual and visual objects studied here functioned in medieval and early modern communities.

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