THE FIRST CHINESE EDITION of Mark Elvin's landmark study, The Pattern of the Chinese Past, was pu... more THE FIRST CHINESE EDITION of Mark Elvin's landmark study, The Pattern of the Chinese Past, was published in the spring of 2023, timed to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the book's issuance. A much earlier translation failed to materialize, but it has recently been discovered that Elvin had written, in 2007, a lengthy Preface for that project. This hitherto unknown Preface, a substantial work of scholarship in its own right, finds its first publication in this special issue of the New Left Review.
In Part I of this study, the Decian Persecution and the crisis of mass apostasy it provoked withi... more In Part I of this study, the Decian Persecution and the crisis of mass apostasy it provoked within mainstream Christianity was identified as a "turning point" moment in the history of the ancient Hellenistic-Roman world. A negotiated decision by moderate and pragmatic bishops to overturn the established ban on the pardoning of apostates incited a major schismatic rupture, as disciplinary hardliners and traditionalists promptly formed an oppositional communion dedicated to full compliance with the purity requirements contained in scripture. Here, in Part II, we will show how Catholics and Katharoi were caught up in a "schismogenic" process of bilateral transformation, their identities adaptively refashioned over the course of intense polemical struggle that had the decisive effect of accelerating and deepening the Catholic embrace of penitential lenity. Thus fortified by a new pastoral-disciplinary regime that restored grievous sinners to sanctity and brought the prospects of eternal salvation within reach of those less capable of sustained zeal and holiness, the Church/Orthodox Church would experience significant membership growth in ensuing decades, setting the stage for the fateful compact with Empire that lay in its future.
To be presented is a two-phased historical-sociological study of "turning points" (Part I) and al... more To be presented is a two-phased historical-sociological study of "turning points" (Part I) and altered "trajectories" (Part II). In the mid-third century, two successive persecutions of Christians would be unleashed by the emperors Decius and Valerian. Those coercive efforts at suppressing the offending "superstitio" were empire-wide in scale, unprecedented in planned efficiency. Under Decius, a universally mandated requirement to offer sacrifices to the gods was backed by monitoring commissions and compliance certificates that featured confirmations of accomplishment and, most ominously, sworn, signed, and notarized declarations of lifelong religious orthopraxy. Great numbers of Christians complied with those directives-either by offering the demonic sacrifices outright or by securing fraudulent certificates attesting to having done so-actions that voided, through idolatrous trespass, the "celestial promise" of eternal life that had been gifted in the baptismal rite of spiritual rebirth. Efforts at resolving the ensuing crisis of mass apostasy split the mainstream Church into competing factions of disciplinary hardliners who resisted, and pragmatic reformers who endorsed the readmission of apostates. Drawing upon Schismogenesis and Sect-Church theories, I examine the course of this schism-doctrinally and demographically-to show how the socially induced and expedited trend towards penitential lenity, as adopted by the majority Catholic variant, facilitated the triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire. The persecution and the schism it provoked carried greater world-historical significance than has hitherto been realized.
Plato's social philosophy has been variously interpreted, with assessments ranging from charges o... more Plato's social philosophy has been variously interpreted, with assessments ranging from charges of 'totalitarianism' to claims that it extols a universal elevation of the human spirit. That such widely diverging views can be held at all confirms the existence of a tension or disjunction at the very core ofPlato's thought, an inadequate linkage between his seemingly reactionary or authoritarian politics on the one hand, and his panhuman exaltation of the soul and corresponding faith in the emancipatory promise of philosophy and education on the other. This essay examines the logical incompatibilities between Plato's restrictive politics and his metaphysical apotheosis of the human psyché, and attempts to show that social or ideological considerations are responsible for this otherwise inexplicable contradiction.
States and Nations, Power and Civility: Hallsian Perspectives, 2019
At critical phases in their early development, both Buddhism and Christianity received the unexpe... more At critical phases in their early development, both Buddhism and Christianity received the unexpected and substantial patronage of imperial rulers, whose ideological advocacy and material benefactions dramatically advanced their socio-historical trajectories. The parallels between King Ashoka of the Maurya dynasty (r.269-232 BCE) and the Roman emperor Constantine (r.306-337 CE) have oft been noted, though rarely with sustained consideration of the strikingly different historical legacies their actions initiated. Ashoka's efforts in support of Buddhism were crucial in raising it to social prominence and facilitating its geo-cultural diffusion across South and East Asia. The distinctive concordance of state and religion he fashioned, however, was neither institutionally reinforced nor sustained by his dynastic successors. Buddhism not only would not become a 'state religion' in the land of its origins, it would steadily yield ground to a resurgent and reformed Brahmanical Hinduism in the aftermath of the Mauryan empire's demise (c.185 BCE). Constantine's embrace of Christianity, in contrast, established both the ideological and the organizational basis for an enduring state-church alliance and the imminent consolidation of a Christian empire and civilization. I will attempt to account for these divergent outcomes by utilizing the an underutilized analytical category in historical-comparative analysis: the "Mega Actor" concept.
No social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and of their int... more No social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and of their intersections within a society, has completed its intellectual journey.
Interviewed for an article by DAVID GLENN, discussing Economistic and Rational Choice approaches ... more Interviewed for an article by DAVID GLENN, discussing Economistic and Rational Choice approaches to the Study of Religion.
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Papers by Joseph Bryant