Remarkable forms of self-governance and collective identity developed within these carceral communities, another means of dealing with the deprivations of captivity. They encouraged solidarity and mutual support, especially among poorer prisoners. And yet, ironically, they could enable greater social control within the prison. Chapter 4 analyses the corporations – headed by elected or customarily selected stewards – through which prisoners managed life inside. They provided the foundations for practical and symbolic collective identities that prisoners also communicated to the wider world. Based around the administration of charity, this culture of self-governance gave rise to customs and practices by which prisoners collectively negotiated their time in prison. Yet although potentially empowering, the formal extension of officeholding to prisoners also represented the wider diffusion of early modern state power into prison populations and an attempt to exert greater social control over them. Indeed, this chapter challenges our view of early modern self-government – often understood as a mechanism of local autonomy and negotiation with higher powers – by discussing an extreme example in which participants could be actively involved in constricting their own liberty.

This chapter outlines the structure and the main themes of the book. Part I will deal with the nature of providence and evil, including sin. Part II will outline the objective dimension of salvation, namely the saving efficacy of Christ, his death and resurrection. Part III will expound the subjective aspect of our salvation, that is, how we appropriate Christ’s saving work through the theological virtues and the sacraments. To do justice to Thomas’s understanding of salvation we need to be attentive to its realized-eschatological, interpersonal and symbolic emphases. We must also jettison dichotomies prevalent in modern scholarship: Thomas’s soteriology is both ontological and symbolical; it is interpersonal and yet makes allowances for the restoration of justice. In occupying the perhaps somewhat inhospitable region between a purely historical account of Thomas’s views and a constructive systematic-theological proposal, this book aspires to offer a readable introduction to central aspects of his theology from a contemporary perspective.

This chapter examines how the records of the poor law, including petitions to magistrates, reveal everyday attitudes towards deafness in early modern England. These records show that deafness was rarely treated as a disabling condition in itself; deaf men and women were generally expected to work, contribute to their households, and support themselves. When deaf people did seek relief, their petitions almost always combined deafness with another factor – old age or illness for example – indicating that deafness alone was not considered sufficient grounds for charitable support. Yet the material also shows how deafness increased vulnerability to life cycle poverty, heightening the risks of unemployment. The language of care, seen in these petitions and in private family trusts for deaf relatives, was sometimes protective but could also function as a mechanism of control, framing deaf petitioners as dependent or incapable. The chapter argues that tensions between expectation of independence and protective oversight shaped the lived experience of many deaf people within early modern systems of welfare or justice

This chapter examines the working lives of prelingually deaf people. It demonstrates that like their hearing contemporaries, deaf people’s patterns of employment were shaped primarily by their social standing, birth order and inherited wealth. At the same time, certain trades were repeatedly chosen for deaf children. Many were trained in visually oriented crafts, working as tailors or ropemakers, where skill depended on sight rather than speech. Others entered exceptionally loud trades – most notably blacksmithing – where vocal communication was impractical and with high rates of occupational deafness. These choices suggest both pragmatic adaptation and an awareness of the environments in which deaf apprentices could thrive. The chapter concludes by examining several wealthy deaf gentlemen who trained as artists, part of a wider European tradition of deaf artists. Together, these cases reveal that deaf people were not only expected to work, but that their occupations were both varied and socially contingent. The integration of deaf people into the works force may have meant that many people encountered a deaf sign language user during their lives.

Justice is central to Islamic ideology, rooted in divine principles and reflected in the structure of the universe. Economic and social justice, according to Islam, are inseparable from faith and must permeate every aspect of life – not just worship. The Qur’an and hadith stress individual and communal responsibility, condemning inequality, exploitation and negligence toward the disadvantaged. Justice is not only a moral value but a spiritual obligation, tied to one’s belief in God and accountability on the Day of Judgment.

Islam assigns collective responsibility to ensure that no one suffers from poverty or injustice. Wealth is viewed as a trust, not private property to be hoarded. Tools like charity (zakat), the prohibition of interest (riba) and profit-sharing (mudaraba) aim to prevent economic exploitation and promote fairness. Contemporary Muslim societies often fail to apply these principles, leading to increasing inequality, alienation and disconnection from faith-based justice.

Musa Sadr calls for scholars and governments to prioritize justice, support the oppressed, reform economic laws and reintegrate justice into educational and legal systems. True Islamic justice demands not charity, but systemic support – interest-free loans, rights for workers and equitable development. Without this, the community is at risk of moral and social disintegration.

This chapter examines and illuminates the ways in which commissioning provisions and processes have contributed to the support, incubation, supply and production of new symphonies in Britain and Ireland since 1900. It takes the interrelationships between selected public and private funders, composers, conductors and orchestras (located in Birmingham, Dublin and Belfast) as its lens. Following a discussion of broader infrastructural contexts, the focus narrows onto three case studies each of which considers a specific commissioning ecosystem through which new symphonies found a platform: (1) The John Feeney Charitable Trust in relation to the period 1957–71; (2) Ireland’s public broadcaster, Raidió Teilifís Éireann and its RTÉ [National] Symphony Orchestra in the 1980s and 1990s; and (3) Piers Hellawell’s (b. 1956) Symphonies in Chains (2019), commissioned for the Ulster Orchestra by New Horizons Music/Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Implicitly addressing the French Revolution, most of these Tales advocated avoiding revolution in Britain by changing the culture and composition of the ruling class. Critiquing the mores and rule of the aristocracy, Eliza Parsons, Maria Hunter, Mary Ann Hanway, Mary Charlton and anonymous others advocated admitting capable, genteel, nouveau riche merchants and professionals, or sometimes humane and competent country gentlemen, into the ruling elite. They also intimated that elite culture should consist of the proto-Victorian values championed by their exemplary merchants, professionals and/or country gentlemen and independent working women and by the marriage of “manners and morals” they modeled. Placing their exemplary protagonists in the wealthy mercantile, professional and gentry classes and showing these groups socializing and intermarrying accords with recent scholarly accounts of the conduct of these classes in the provinces, as they began to consolidate into a Victorian upper middle class.

Addressing adversity and hardships that readers were likely to encounter in ordinary life (falls into poverty or bankruptcy, loss of parents, lover, caste and home, malignant misrepresentations, sexual harassment, domestic cruelty), these fictions were described as novels. In modeling the idealized responses of characters from the mercantile and professional ranks or from the lesser gentry to suffering and misfortune, Eliza Parsons, Jane West, Elizabeth Bonhote, Mrs. Gunning, Elizabeth Helme, Anna Maria Bennett, Mary Meeke, Ann Howell, Isabella Kelly, Susannah Rowson and many anonymous authors promoted new, proto-Victorian values. Novels of Education addressed issues of parenting and upbringing up to and including courtship and centered on debates about filial obedience, especially in choice of a spouse. Marital Domestic Fiction debated issues related to adultery, divorce, widowhood, spinsterhood, and second marriages. Female Biography combined the two with elements of other genres to follow one or more characters through a “Life.”

This chapter will trace the importance of charity and almsgiving as an inherited component of Christianity in general, as a particular duty of care in Byzantine society, and as an expression and physical manifestation of the theology of Byzantine Christianity. After a brief introduction to the cultural origins and scriptural roots of charity and almsgiving, this chapter will explore the theological rationale of charity and almsgiving specific to expressions of Byzantine Christianity and will identify select charitable institutions and significant almsgivers.

This chapter focuses on the nature of love, and especially on the relationship between love as self-regarding and other-regarding (eros and agape). It is argued – in dialogue with authors such as Anders Nygren and C.S. Lewis – that Aquinas’s theory of love can account for and harmonize these two aspects of love.

In this chapter, the Christological and soteriological ideas that have tacitly informed the theodicy are made explicit, and it is argued that the theodicy strengthens the coherence of the Christian web of beliefs. It is also argued that the analysis of love that the theodicy builds on enables a deeper understanding of Christ’s atoning and sanctifying work.

Reflective civics is a duty and delight for free people, especially Americans, given our founding principles viewing citizenship as not only a right but also a duty and a matter of sacred honor. American schooling K-16, and civic culture, can redress our recent deficits of civic health and of individual mental and spiritual health by emphasizing the higher meaning provided throughout the study of, and civil discussion about, citizenship and self-government in both civil society and public affairs. Then sections on (a) Civic Friendship and Replenishing America’s Civic Capital – including renewal of civil society and voluntary associations; (b) A Sputnik Moment for Academia: Restoring a Higher Civics – emphasizing the need for professors and higher education leaders to provide guidance and a good example on renewing civics, and supporting its renewal in K-12 schooling and civic culture; and (c) Lincoln’s Higher Call – that a renewed civics across K-16 and American culture should emphasize the consensus-forging figure of Lincoln, his magnanimity and statesmanship in the Second Inaugural in particular, calling for “malice toward none” and “charity for all.”

The conclusion shows that the righteousness of faith is polyvalent: if faith is motivated by fear, as in Donatists and lax catechumens, it fails to justify; if faith is motivated by hope in Christ, as in converting catechumens, it justifies because it will obtain the grace of the Holy Spirit; if faith is motivated by love of Christ, as in the faithful, it justifies as the essential superstructure of righteousness in Christ. In every case, faith justifies as the crucible in which God transforms desire. As final examples, the conclusion considers the catechumen as an image of the process of justification and the baptized as an image of the state of justification, though it is a state characterized both by righteousness in Christ and by hope in future grace. Ultimately, faith is a proper theological mystery for Augustine because faith’s righteousness comes from its being saturated with Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Despite the colossal importance of Augustine in the history of justification, no comprehensive study on this topic has yet been written. Moreover, the prevailing view is that Augustine understood justification to be caused by charity, not faith. This book aims to re-center Augustine’s theology of justification onto faith, and its thesis is that Augustine developed multiple accounts of how faith justifies based on whether faith is motivated by fear (which fails to justify), hope (which will justify), or love (which already justifies). The introduction then establishes the fundamentals of justification for Augustine: Augustine understands justification to consist in forgiveness and interior renewal, interprets iustificare (to justify) as making righteous by grace alone, and understands human iustitia (righteousness) as a created gift distinct from God’s righteousness. Lastly, the introduction shows how justification was central to Augustine, both to counter Pelagianism and to explain the work of God operative in the actions of the Church.

The ‘logic’ of charity in modern Britain has been understood as ‘complex’ and ‘varied’: ‘a loose and baggy monster’. Charity after Empire takes this complexity as the basis for a new interpretation. First, the indeterminacy of the role and function of charity lay behind its popularity and growth. With no fixed notions of what they should be or what they should do, charities and NGOs have expanded because they have been many things to many people. Second, the messy practices of aid meant success could always be claimed amidst uncertain objectives and outcomes, triggering further expansion. Third, just as charity was welcomed as a solution to poverty overseas, its scope and potential were contained by powerful political actors who restricted its campaigning and advocacy work. Fourth, racial injustice, especially apartheid, shaped not only humanitarianism overseas but also the domestic governance of charity in Britain. It all resulted not only in the massive expansion of charity but also limitations placed on its role and remit.

To be adopted, health-producing policies need to be supported by the elites. Although everyone’s health suffers from economic inequality, the poor suffer more social murder. Creating awareness is the challenge. Countries have goals and becoming healthier is one that is possible for the US. Charities and philanthropies, which command great power, mostly serve the rich, and are unaccountable to the public, won’t create the awareness needed to produce health-generating policies. Public resources should benefit the public. The government has subsidized much technology that, once profitable, is given to private industry at no cost. To change American policies requires creating awareness of the problem, reaching an agreement on a potential solution, and some transforming event such as a market shock, invasion, or other stimulus. Various ways of creating understanding are presented. Telling stories is the most effective

Abraham Lincoln is the only president never to have joined a religious body. Although he was raised in a Christian home, he was more nearly identifiable as a deist, and considered himself a man of reason rather than faith. The civil war, however, presented him with conundrums in understanding how the war had come and why it was progressing so poorly, and he began slowly to incorporate more language into his thinking which looked for religious answers to his questions. His second inaugural address captures that questioning at its most famous length. Even then, his use of religious ideas is idiosyncratic, and cannot be easily identified with any formal religious confession.

This chapter argues that Augustine adopts a second-person perspective, which “is characterized by dialogical speech, shared awareness of shared focus with the second person, and an orientation to love that other person.” This perspective shapes his understanding of the moral life; it gives pride of place to second-person relations, whether in the virtuous love of God and neighbor or in the disordered friendship without which Augustine tells us he would not have stolen the pears. Examining three virtues – humility, mercy, and charity – the chapter shows how each of them can be understood only in terms of proper relatedness to some other person. Since these virtues are prominent in the Confessions but altogether absent from the Nicomachean Ethics, a close look at them reveals the considerable differences between an Augustinian and an Aristotelian approach to the virtues. It also sheds light on how to read Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas’ considerable inheritance from Augustine goes largely ignored by scholars focusing on Aquinas’s Aristotelianism. Attention to Augustine is accordingly crucial for a more balanced understanding of Aquinas; it also holds promise for future work in virtue ethics.