Papers by ALEX PAVUK
Anglican and Episcopal History 90, no. 3 , 2021
As the final days of World War I moved toward armistice, another kind of rapprochement effort ren... more As the final days of World War I moved toward armistice, another kind of rapprochement effort renewed itself in a Protestant Episcopal seminary in New York City. Representatives of the American Episcopal Church were sitting down in ecumenical negotiation with Metropolitan Meletios Metaxakis, a controversial Eastern Orthodox archbishop of Athens who was visiting America ostensibly to investigate Greek Orthodox communities but also to meet with leaders of other Christian bodies and civic leaders. His advertised goal was full church unity but he as much sought collateral postwar support for himself and other Greeks throughout Asia Minor. Segments of the global Anglican Communion and the local Orthodox Churches had for some time attempted to broach their administrative and doctrinal separation, but without success. Meletios substantially intensified the dialogue when he came to New York in 1918 for an extended period. The paper analyzes Metaxakis’ encounters with leaders of the American Episcopal Church, particularly Rev. William Chauncey Emhardt, in their efforts to join the Orthodox Church and Protestant Episcopal Church together as part of broader goals. Evidence reveals how and why discussants intertwined the spiritual with the ethno-national to the extent they did, framing even matters like variant rites and expressions of doctrine within identity-centered lenses of “national habits” and “racial” temper among the Anglo-Saxon and the Easterner, respectively.
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Historical Research 91, no. 251 (2018): 137-159. Instead of viewing racial eugenics, modernist... more Historical Research 91, no. 251 (2018): 137-159. Instead of viewing racial eugenics, modernist religion and prescriptions for social engineering as discourses tangential to the evolution constructs propounded by top scientists in the build‐up to the Scopes trial, this article considers how the American Association for the Advancement of Science's official Committee on Evolution intertwined all of these threads by the early nineteen- twenties. Committee members aimed their evolution models at broad public audiences even as they tried to fulfill the American Civil Liberties Union's request to provide a scientifically‐sound, authoritative view of evolution-- especially to help combat Protestant fundamentalism. But racialist eugenics was essential to their multi‐layered evolution constructs, as were key religious ideas particular to Protestant modernism.
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Annals of Science 74, no. 1 (2017): 64-82.
SUMMARY Edwin Grant Conklin, renowned US embryo... more Annals of Science 74, no. 1 (2017): 64-82.
SUMMARY Edwin Grant Conklin, renowned US embryologist and evolutionary popularizer, publicly advocated a social vision of evolution that intertwined science and modernist Protestant theology in the early 1920s. The moral prestige of professional science in American culture—along with Conklin's own elite scientific status— diverted attention from the frequency with which his work crossed boundaries between natural science, religion, and philosophy. Writing for broad audiences, Conklin was one of the most significant of the religious and modernist biological scientists whose rhetoric went well beyond simply claiming that certain kinds of religion were amenable to evolutionary science; he instead incorporated religion itself into evolution's broadest workings. A sampling of Conklin's widely-resonant discourse suggests that there was substantially more to the religion-evolution story in the 1920s US than many creationist-centred narratives of the era imply.
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Religion and American Culture 26, no. 1 (2016): 101-137. DOI: 10.1525/rac.2016.26.1.101
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U.S. Catholic Historian
VOR at U.S. Catholic Historian 34, no. 1 (2016) ['sexuality' issue]: 53-76. DOI: 10.1353/cht.20... more VOR at U.S. Catholic Historian 34, no. 1 (2016) ['sexuality' issue]: 53-76. DOI: 10.1353/cht.2016.0006
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VOR at American Catholic Studies 118, no. 4 (2007): 37-67
This article traces the genesis, earl... more VOR at American Catholic Studies 118, no. 4 (2007): 37-67
This article traces the genesis, early development, and cultural influence of Catholic Hour, a popular weekly radio program produced by the National Council of Catholic Men first appearing on NBC radio in 1930. This radio show was part of a triumvirate of religious programs appearing on free airtime donated by the network to fulfill government-mandated public interest programming requirements. Although Catholic Hour's serialized, thematic sermons featured a variety of speakers, this piece centers on the rhetoric and listener responses associated with the program's two most frequent speakers—and most popular personalities— Fulton Sheen and James Gillis. It contends that Catholic Hour went beyond the cautious boundaries conceived for it by network and church officials to disseminate an idealized, yet polyvalent, vision of Catholicism that reached a large and responsive audience of both non-Catholics and Catholics. As such, it transcended the bounds of region and ethnicity that had traditionally encumbered the voice and image of Catholicism in American culture. In achieving respectability, Catholic Hour simultaneously critiqued widespread social attitudes on topics such as the role of scientific authority and race in interwar American culture, offering what its speakers presented as a timeless, yet thoroughly American, take on important issues of the day. Speakers' success in building a wide-ranging audience was due in no small part to the unique qualities of the radio medium itself, a medium that enabled a diverse group of listeners to imagine Catholic authorities inoffensively chatting with them in their living rooms.
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Book Reviews by ALEX PAVUK
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History: Reviews of New Books , 2012
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Books by ALEX PAVUK
The Catholic University of America Press, 2021
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Papers by ALEX PAVUK
SUMMARY Edwin Grant Conklin, renowned US embryologist and evolutionary popularizer, publicly advocated a social vision of evolution that intertwined science and modernist Protestant theology in the early 1920s. The moral prestige of professional science in American culture—along with Conklin's own elite scientific status— diverted attention from the frequency with which his work crossed boundaries between natural science, religion, and philosophy. Writing for broad audiences, Conklin was one of the most significant of the religious and modernist biological scientists whose rhetoric went well beyond simply claiming that certain kinds of religion were amenable to evolutionary science; he instead incorporated religion itself into evolution's broadest workings. A sampling of Conklin's widely-resonant discourse suggests that there was substantially more to the religion-evolution story in the 1920s US than many creationist-centred narratives of the era imply.
This article traces the genesis, early development, and cultural influence of Catholic Hour, a popular weekly radio program produced by the National Council of Catholic Men first appearing on NBC radio in 1930. This radio show was part of a triumvirate of religious programs appearing on free airtime donated by the network to fulfill government-mandated public interest programming requirements. Although Catholic Hour's serialized, thematic sermons featured a variety of speakers, this piece centers on the rhetoric and listener responses associated with the program's two most frequent speakers—and most popular personalities— Fulton Sheen and James Gillis. It contends that Catholic Hour went beyond the cautious boundaries conceived for it by network and church officials to disseminate an idealized, yet polyvalent, vision of Catholicism that reached a large and responsive audience of both non-Catholics and Catholics. As such, it transcended the bounds of region and ethnicity that had traditionally encumbered the voice and image of Catholicism in American culture. In achieving respectability, Catholic Hour simultaneously critiqued widespread social attitudes on topics such as the role of scientific authority and race in interwar American culture, offering what its speakers presented as a timeless, yet thoroughly American, take on important issues of the day. Speakers' success in building a wide-ranging audience was due in no small part to the unique qualities of the radio medium itself, a medium that enabled a diverse group of listeners to imagine Catholic authorities inoffensively chatting with them in their living rooms.
Book Reviews by ALEX PAVUK
Books by ALEX PAVUK
SUMMARY Edwin Grant Conklin, renowned US embryologist and evolutionary popularizer, publicly advocated a social vision of evolution that intertwined science and modernist Protestant theology in the early 1920s. The moral prestige of professional science in American culture—along with Conklin's own elite scientific status— diverted attention from the frequency with which his work crossed boundaries between natural science, religion, and philosophy. Writing for broad audiences, Conklin was one of the most significant of the religious and modernist biological scientists whose rhetoric went well beyond simply claiming that certain kinds of religion were amenable to evolutionary science; he instead incorporated religion itself into evolution's broadest workings. A sampling of Conklin's widely-resonant discourse suggests that there was substantially more to the religion-evolution story in the 1920s US than many creationist-centred narratives of the era imply.
This article traces the genesis, early development, and cultural influence of Catholic Hour, a popular weekly radio program produced by the National Council of Catholic Men first appearing on NBC radio in 1930. This radio show was part of a triumvirate of religious programs appearing on free airtime donated by the network to fulfill government-mandated public interest programming requirements. Although Catholic Hour's serialized, thematic sermons featured a variety of speakers, this piece centers on the rhetoric and listener responses associated with the program's two most frequent speakers—and most popular personalities— Fulton Sheen and James Gillis. It contends that Catholic Hour went beyond the cautious boundaries conceived for it by network and church officials to disseminate an idealized, yet polyvalent, vision of Catholicism that reached a large and responsive audience of both non-Catholics and Catholics. As such, it transcended the bounds of region and ethnicity that had traditionally encumbered the voice and image of Catholicism in American culture. In achieving respectability, Catholic Hour simultaneously critiqued widespread social attitudes on topics such as the role of scientific authority and race in interwar American culture, offering what its speakers presented as a timeless, yet thoroughly American, take on important issues of the day. Speakers' success in building a wide-ranging audience was due in no small part to the unique qualities of the radio medium itself, a medium that enabled a diverse group of listeners to imagine Catholic authorities inoffensively chatting with them in their living rooms.