Cool Web Tools for Educators

I took the time yesterday to complete my annual professional development training in the form of a Webinar put together by the training staff at the consortium of community colleges I teach online courses for.  In the past we've had training on everything on how to use learning management systems, to mind mapping courses to ensure that they meet state-mandated course requirements, to managing discussions.  This time around, I chose the Webinar on free tools that can enhance courses when instructors use them, but that students can also use to enhance their own work.  I can see several ways to immediately use these in my courses.  Below are the tools that stood out for most.

JoinMe (http://join.me)

There are several tools that accomplish some of what JoinMe does, but none that tie all of the features together in such a compact, easy to use package.  As with the other tools here, the basic version is free, but a premium offer with more features is also available.

At its core, JoinMe provides instant screen sharing and free voice conferencing access.  That makes it great for collaborative projects and group meetings.  That's not as big a deal when you have a traditional classroom course, but when you have students scattered across multiple states (or continents) working on a project together, this allows closer contact than email, discussion posts, or IMs. Yes, you can use Google+ Hangouts to accomplish that, but JoinMe has an additional feature that trumps them.  JoinMe provides the option to give one or more of your meeting participants control over your PC.  That makes it a good tool for tutoring, real time editing, and tech support.

Only the host needs to download any software, a small client stub.  Clients connect by going to the JoinMe website and entering a random 9 digit code that the host provides them by email or text.  The Host can also create a dynamic link that allows clients to directly connect without going through the website.  This one is definitely a keeper.

Projeqt (http://projeqt.com)

Alternatives to Powerpoint are proliferating these days, and some of the best are cloud-based entities.  One of the more interesting options is Projeqt, which promotes itself as allowing dynamic presentations for a "realtime" world, and is designed to for "creative" storytelling presentations.  Projeqt has three key features that make it worthy of consideration and separate it from competitors like Prezi (see below).

Stacks

This the most visible difference from Powerpoint - Projeqt allows users to create a layered presentation. The top layer is the first level of the presentation, and navigates like a Powerpoint clone.  However, you can make any slide into a stack that you can drive down into for more detail.  Not only does this allow you to make comprehensive presentations that include galleries of supporting information that you can call (or ignore) as needed, but each presentation can also act as a portfolio, with each stack acting as a mini-presentation of its own.

Pulse

The second key feature Projeqt offers is the ability to embed live data from other sites into your presentation.  While importing content from websites and applications is old hat by now, this is a whole different animal.  Projeqt lets you embed streams of content from twitter, RSS, Vimeo, Google Maps, etc... and constantly updates those streams as you use the presentation.  If you embed Google Maps, for example, you get the full functionality without ever leaving your presentation.  When you embed a twitter search, all items for the hashtag are constantly updated.  The opportunities for presentations covering rapidly changing events are pretty interesting, and it keeps the content from ever becoming stale.  The downside is that you have to find other ways to add content that needs to be static.

Cross

Projeqt's final feature is cross-platform compatibility for phones, tablets, laptops.  The dynamic player changes the way presentations appear on each device so that you get appropriate content views and navigation regardless of how you access the presentation.

Daytum (http://daytum.com)

On first glance, Daytum seems kind of weird.  It's basically a tool that allows users to collect categorize, and communicate data.  This thing is a marketer's or data miner's dream because it not only allows you to enter any data you want, and categorize it, but to make custom displays of that data so that you can present it visually or perform a variety of sorts and statistical functions.  I'm not sure about how my students would use this, but it would be great for data heavy disciplines like sociology, political science, hard sciences, and business.  This is the type of thing that nonprofits should be using when they develop their annual reports.

That gets to Daytum's origins. It's creator started tracking information about his life and put out annual report of food eaten, people he spent time with, work done, etc… He  started with database tool for his own data, and then created a similar tool for others.  The result is Daytum.

Prezi (http://prezi.com)

Prezi is the last of the tools that caught my eye.  Like Projeqt, it is presentation software with cloud storage  I was already a bit familiar with Prezi since many of my students use it to create fantastic presentations for my World Civilizations I & II courses. What makes Prezi different than other presentation packages is that all work takes place on a giant canvas that users place their information on.  Content can go anywhere on the canvas, and it zoomed in on for display (giving the feeling of interactivity).  Users create a path to move through the content in creative, sometimes mind-boggling ways.  Individual slides can be of various shapes, and creators can make the frame for the slide invisible, add images, text, video, or audio.  Multimedia content can be uploaded from a computer or embedded from sites like Youtube.  One of the coolest features is that existing Powerpoint slides can be uploaded and converted to develop fresh presentations of existing content.

The presentation path is easy to change, so that a single Prezi can contain hidden information.  This allows a single presentation to be easily adapted for audiences or circumstance.  One example of this is that if you know that your presentation will be given in an area without Internet access, you can add static versions of online content your presentation uses and edit the path to include it when offline.  You could also use this feature to create an executive summary version of the presentation within the more comprehensive version.

State Religion and the Glorious Revolution

This is the fourth and final of the English Civil War series.  The politics of English state religion and fears of the "dangers" of dissenters and Catholics led to the establishment of William of Orange and Mary Stuart on the English throne after what turned out to be a token defense to their invasion from the Netherlands.  How this fifty year stretch of English history became embedded in the psyche of the North American colonies is a whole different issue, which includes a special role for mass media in the form of pamphleteers.

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In 1688, just three years after Charles II’s death, his brother and heir faced domestic turmoil and invasion by a foreign army.  James II squandered the political and religious settlement Charles crafted by issuing a second Declaration of Indulgence without the approval of Parliament, bringing Catholics into government, and interfering with the Parliamentary elections of 1688.  These acts brought England’s latent fears of popery and arbitrary government to the surface once more, and paved the way for William III’s invasion of England.  The key issues of the preceding Stuart monarchy and English Civil Wars dominated England’s political landscape, with the key difference that James’ predecessors acted to defend their power, while James acted out of religious motives.

Despite the apparently secure position of his government, which could operate without recourse to parliaments due to its financial security, James II managed to turn the opinions of even loyalists against him by the end of 1688.  His first misstep was the second Declaration of Indulgence, which allowed Catholics and Protestant dissenters freedom to worship as they chose, and removed oath taking as a requirement for holding office.  James followed the Declaration by aggressively including Catholics in government and higher education.  The high visibility of Catholics at court, including the Queen, a papal envoy, and the Jesuit Fr. Petre inflamed anti-Catholic sentiment.

The promotion of Catholics at court combined with renewed fears of arbitrary government.  First, James II prorogued the Parliament of 1685 to quell its dissent over Catholic officers and cavalry troops in his standing army after the Monmouth Rebellion.  Then, he made his 1687 and 1688 Declarations of Indulgence without consultation with Parliament, creating fears among Protestants that the safeguards of the religious settlement of Charles II’s restoration were gone.  Finally, James imprisoned the Seven Bishops who petitioned against the Declaration of Indulgence, and charged them with seditious libel.  Despite the juror’s refusal to find the Bishops guilty, James viewed their disobedience as an act of rebellion.

            

The English fear of both Catholics and arbitrary government during the seventeenth century did not occur in isolation.  The Thirty Years’ War and the Catholic Counter-Reformation in Continental Europe provided the backdrop to the drama unfolding in England.  By the 1680’s only the United Provinces and England stood against the continued expansion of Catholic France.  Jonathan Scott argues that Protestants were defensive and fearful due to the Counter-reformation and French imperial expansion, and that James’ actions exacerbated the fears of both English and Dutch Protestants, particularly when he ordered three English regiments defending the United Provinces from France to return to England.  Renewed French efforts to destroy the United Provinces, and Louis XIV’s revocation of the edict of Nantes enhanced the climate of fear Protestants lived in.

            

Unlike the majority of Englishmen, James believed that the Netherlands were a greater threat to England than France.  Not only were the United Provinces a republic, but they allowed the most religious freedom of any European state.  The Dutch also competed with English merchants around the globe and possessed military and naval power overshadowing England’s.  James also believed that the United Provinces financed the Monmouth rebellion, and provided a refuge to English dissidents, making it a direct threat to the security of his throne.  James’ subjects, however, viewed France as a much more significant threat due to Louis XIV’s persecution of the Huguenots and his insistence that his power as monarch had no earthly limits.  France had also erected trade barriers to English finished goods, making France both a ideological and financial adversary.

            

The combination of English and Dutch fear for the future of Protestantism and Dutch security concerns resulted in the Dutch invasion of England.  The goal of the invasion, led by William, Prince of Orange, was to secure English Protestantism and to ensure England’s assistance against France.  A coalition of Tory and Whig gentry invited William to liberate England from James’ tyranny, writing that both officers and soldiers were so opposed to James’ pro-Catholic policies that they would desert the army to support a Dutch invasion (Pincus, 38).  When William’s force landed in England, some English officers did defect to him, and other members of the gentry took arms against their monarch.

            

In contrast to the Scottish invasion of England at the beginning of the First Civil War, William occupied London, understanding that it was the key to the Kingdom.  While the Whigs requested that William take over the government of England after James fled the country, he called an Assembly of the Commons in order to convene a parliament and to re-establish a government in England.  The Dutch goal in invading England was not simply to depose James, but to ensure that English Protestants were secure, and to gain English military support against France.  Since the English held such fear of republican government, the United Provinces were forced to preserve the English monarchy and Parliaments.  This requirement meant that William needed to restore the anti-French Parliaments of the 1670’s and 1680’s, even if James remained as King of England.

            

The Assembly of the Commons recalled the members of the Oxford Parliament of 1681, which called for new elections.  The electorate returned relatively even numbers of Tory and Whig members, with some communities decided to return one member of each party.  The Speakers of both the Commons and Lords were chosen primarily for their acceptability to all of the members of each House.  A prodigious pamphlet campaign accompanied Parliament’s debates over the monarchy and its limitations.  The pamphlets advocated solutions covering the political spectrum from declaring William and Mary King and Queen, to establishing a regency for James, to starting anew. Ultimately, William and Mary were offered their crowns with a reiteration of the limitations of English monarchs, documented primarily in the Declaration of Rights.  In addition to the Declaration of Rights, Parliamentarians demanded that William act to root out popery and to defend England’s interests from France.

            

The key provisions of the Declaration of Rights, which became the English Bill of Rights, included strictures against the practices of all of the Stuart monarchs, including extra-parliamentary taxation, interference in elections, maintenance of standing armies, and assignment of excessive bail or fines.  The Convention also decreed that members of the royal family could not marry Catholics, that Catholics could not succeed the crown, and liberty of conscience for Protestants.  As a defensive measure, the Declaration also decreed that the king could not dissolve Parliaments in the midst of business. 

            

Historians continue to debate the events of the Glorious Revolution, the results, and who the “winners” of the settlement were.  A key question is whether the Glorious Revolution was an actual revolution, or a restoration of traditional English government.  Hoak and Feingold argue that the financial and military changes such as the development of the Bank of England and system of public credit were revolutionary changes, while Holmes argues that the Glorious Revolution was a restoration of political power followed by adaptations to new economic and military realities.  Holmes’ conservative view of the revolution as a restoration is that Parliament merely reasserted its rights under the Ancient Constitution.

            

The other side of the argument, that the Glorious Revolution was a revolution, contends that the change in the succession with the crowning of William and Mary, the Exclusion from Catholics from the succession, radical changes in foreign policy, and establishment of more limited monarchy were revolutionary in the modern sense.  Since the Tories and Bishops were opposed to any changes in the succession, this alone could qualify the settlement as revolutionary in nature.  The manner in which the crown was transferred to William and Mary was a radical change – parliament determined that James had abdicated, or been deposed, by his flight from England.  The normal succession would then designate either the Prince of Wales or Mary as the next monarch.  The traditional way to alter the succession would be for William to take the crown as the spoils of conquest, as his lawyers suggested.  The break in the succession, then, represents a true revolution in its own right.

Religion and the State: The Exclusion Crisis

This is the third installment of my look back at the issues of the English Civil War that a century later became embedded in the ideology of the generation of the American Revolution.  The major themes of the English Revolution are of absolutism vs constitutional government, and the role of religion in the state.  Americans continue to  argue over these issues after over three centuries - just look at the remarks prominent Evangelical leaders made in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Massacre, blaming ban on school prayer for the tragedy.  The Exclusion Crisis provides a concrete example of why many of the Founders insisted that the First Amendment prohibit the establishment of official state religion in the United States.

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Titus Oates’ clamed discovery of a Popish Plot to attack Charles II and England’s Protestants led to renewed crisis between the Stuart Monarchy and its Whig opponents in Parliament.  The revived threat of a Catholic conquest of England provided the opposition the opportunity to campaign for the removal of the Catholic Duke of York from the succession, and the imposition of limits on the power of the monarchy and the Anglican Church hierarchy.  Unlike his father, Charles II was able to survive his enemy’s attacks by engaging in his own propaganda campaign, by securing royal income without having to call Parliament, and by avoiding war while dealing with a domestic political crisis.

 

The Exclusion Crisis was precipitated by the 1678 discovery of the Popish Plot, which Oates claimed was a Jesuit design to conquer England and convert the populace to Catholicism.  He claimed that the Jesuits would disguise themselves as presbyters and foment a rebellion in Scotland, which would accompany an Irish Catholic revolt.  Once these revolutions began, the Jesuits would assassinate Charles II and burn London to the ground.  The Plot fed English anxiety about the security of the Protestantism and coincided with a rebellion of 8,000 covenanters in Scotland in response to perceived oppression at the hands of the Scottish church hierarchy.  Rumors of massacres in Ireland in 1679 and a French-backed Irish rebellion in 1680 lent further credence to Oates’ tale.

Fear of rebellion combined with English fears of the security of the Protestant Reformation in Northwest Europe to lead religious dissenters to worry that Charles or his Catholic heir would adopt arbitrary power in the manner of Louis XIV of France to reintroduce Catholicism.  Jonathan Scott argues that the Whigs’ parliamentary movement for limitations on the monarchy and Anglican hierarchy that they believed would protect them from persecution by an absolute ruler represent a reawakening of republican ideals. Although members of the House of Commons offered lesser solutions such as creating a regency council during the reign of future Catholic monarchs, or having Charles remarry to produce a legitimate heir, their primary goal remained the exclusion of his Catholic brother, the Duke of York, from the succession primarily due to this dormant republicanism.  In the Duke of York’s place, Charles’ parliamentary opponents asked him to declare his illegitimate son, the Duke on Monmouth, legitimate, making him next in the line of succession.

When Charles proved unwilling to alter the succession, Whig parliamentarians attempted to force the issue by introducing the Acts of Exclusion in parliaments of 1679, 1680, and 1681.  Charles prevented passage of all three attempts by suspending, and then dissolving parliament.  Frustrated by his intransigence, and unable to coerce Charles into either maintaining parliament or calling new ones due to his ready income, the Whig waged a propaganda campaign of pamphlets, broadsheets, and newspapers.  The Whigs also utilized popular coffee houses to coordinate their attacks on Charles and his ministers.  The propaganda campaign was an effective one, allowing the Whigs to return majorities to the parliaments of 1680 and 1681 by playing on the electors’ fear of Catholics and arbitrary rule.  When these measures did not achieve the desired effect, parliamentary Whigs impeached or imprisoned Charles’ ministers.

The Whig campaign included defenses of the “Right of War” espoused by John Locke, who argued that when government invaded the rights of the individual; the government lost its authority to govern.  Locke expanded on the arguments of William Penn and William Mead, who argued that laws had no force if they ran counter to the rights provided by Magna Charta, and that the individual would therefore be in a state of war against the oppressive regime.  In addition to the contention that a government that violated individual rights, Scott finds that radicals revived the rhetoric and idealism of the revolution in order to defend their religious freedom.  John Locke and Algernon Sidney wrote their treatises on civil government in response to the belief that spiritual and civil oppression were irrevocably linked.

To Charles II and his Tory supporters it appeared that the Whig campaign was leading in the direction of the First Civil War, and responded by fighting fire with fire.  When the Duke of York was charged with recusancy, the grand jury was dissolved before it could indict him.  When he was ultimately indicted in Middlesex, the case was moved to the King’s Bench and not prosecuted.  In response to Whig sermons that equated Catholicism with arbitrary rule and persecution of Protestants, the Anglican hierarchy preached that dissent and Civil War would return England to the arbitrary rule of Parliament.  When dissolving the eight-day Parliament of 1681, Charles publicly accused the sitting parliament of arbitrary use of its power by imprisoning his supporters without due process.

The Parliament of 1681 was the last called during his reign.  After dissolving parliament, Charles and the Tories embarked on a campaign to suppress all political and religious dissent.  He accomplished this by appealing to public opinion and by purging Whigs from local and national government.  The purge allowed Charles to silence dissent using his powers to censor the press.  Unlike his father, Charles II was able to pursue this course because he was not dependent upon parliament for income.  The 1660 restoration provided the monarchy with permanent revenues in the form of excise taxes and monthly assessments, which later supplemented by chimney money and poll taxes.  Increasing trade and efficiency in collecting customs duties further bolstered Charles revenue.  Charles also received a secret subsidy from Louis XIV, a result of his agreement to stay neutral in the Franco-Dutch conflict.

Freedom from parliamentary interference, allowed Charles and the Tories to sway public opinion through a propaganda campaign that not only matched Whig treatises and newspapers with persuasive arguments, but also popular clubs.  Charles published his own works, which he ordered read from the pulpit.  In order to keep the peace and to demonstrate his divine right to rule, Charles’ supporters targeted all levels of society, not just the propertied elite who voted or served in parliament.  Harris argues that the propaganda campaign was a direct response to the opposition appeals to the public that led to the Civil War in the 1640s.  Addresses, or petitions supporting the King, were also used to demonstrate pubic support for the monarchy.  Towns, counties, and groups collected signatures of individuals agreeing to statements supporting Charles’ policies in a coordinated campaign.  The receipt of the addresses was then published in the Tory press to convince the reading public of wide support for the King.  Like other propaganda efforts, the addresses targeted the muddled middle that initially supported the Whigs in the absence of counter arguments.

The propaganda campaign accompanied the purge of Whigs and dissenters from local offices and returned loyalists to their places.  Justices of the Peace and militia leaders not loyal to the crown lost their offices.  The purge was not limited to the counties, but extended to the corporations.  Corporations were a particularly tricky issue, as they selected their own magistrates, voted for the majority of MPs, and had their own judicial systems.  The corporations were purged through a series of systematic challenges of their charters.  The purpose of the corporate purge was to prevent Whigs from packing juries.  By controlling municipal juries, the crown could ensure that its censorship efforts were effective, as juries controlled by Tories returned staggering judgments against Whig partisans for libel or recusancy.  Excessive fines allowed the crown to imprison its opponents, removing them from the political scene.

The combination of propaganda, income, and control of local government allowed Charles and the Tories to quash opposition to his reign and his brothers’ succession through his death in 1685.  Charles’ success was furthered by his ability to play his three kingdoms against each other.  His supporters in the Scottish parliament passed an act declaring that the parliament in England could not alter the succession.  During the Exclusion Crisis, Charles II enjoyed freedom of action because he did not have to rely on parliament for income, and the fact that he was not held as a virtual hostage by an invading army from the north.  His understanding of the need to placate the populace combined with his financial freedom to allow him to strengthen the Stuart monarchy during his reign.

The causes of the Exclusion Crisis continue to be debated by historians.  Steven Pincus argues that the debate was a wholly secular one on the nature of government, while Richard Greaves argues that radicals primarily focused on defending Protestantism in England, Scotland, and the Netherlands against encroaching Catholic gains in Europe.  Jonathan Scott contends that the work of Locke and Sidney clearly focus on the combination of arbitrary government and imposition of Catholicism.  Tim Harris supports Scott’s interpretation of the Exclusion Crisis and political conflict in the later restoration.  The contrast shows that the main historiographical issue is whether the radicalism of the Restoration period was more due to religious dissent, republican political ideals, or a combination of the two extremes. 

Religious Conformity, Loyalty to the State, and Seventeenth Century England

Continuing my ruminations on the connections between the English Civil War and the political concerns of the founding generation of Americans.  The issue of state religion seems especially timely due to the recurrent themes of the "War on Christmas" and efforts of conservatives to push their brand of Protestant Christianity back into public schools (cue Mike Huckabee here).

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Religious conformity in early modern England was as much about loyalty to the crown as acceptance of a particular theological doctrine.  Attendance at Sunday services was compulsory, so refusal to attend became both a secular and temporal crime, particularly in the face of conflicts with Catholic France and Spain.  However, both Jesuit missionaries and puritan dissenters fought against conformity as dangerous to their faiths. As the seventeenth century progressed toward the English Civil War the penalties for religious non-conformance increased, ensuring that more and more dissenters of both Catholic and Protestant stripes.  The primary theme is the question of whether church attendance was a solely religious issue, or one of loyalty to the English crown.

The most visible religious dissenters were Catholics, called recusants, who refused to attend the Church of England’s services in accordance with dictates of the Pope.  Recusants faced imprisonment, fines, and loss of lands if prosecuted for non-attendance.  As a result, most Catholics, called conformists or church papists, chose to attend Anglican services.  For some Catholics church attendance provided a visible declaration of loyalty to the crown in addition to avoidance of civil or criminal penalties.  While attending church preserved the lives, freedom, and property of conformists, Papal decrees stated that attendance at Anglican services was a mortal sin.  Catholics that repeatedly attended Protestant services were ineligible for absolution from the sin of attendance.

Jesuit missionaries sought to discourage conformity by Catholics with a propaganda campaign.  Priests used hidden presses to publish and distribute tracts denouncing conformity in part because they lacked the traditional parish structure to distribute their message.  Missionaries secretly distributed manuals to teach Catholics the best way to respond to queries about their refusal to attend church.  In this way, the act of refusal became a positive assertion of their beliefs, not a negative reaction to authority.

Not only did the missionaries struggle to bring lapsed Catholics back to the faith, but they worked to prevent conformists from accepting Protestantism through osmosis.  Jesuits worried that long-term exposure to proselytizing from the pulpit would win Protestantism new converts from conforming Catholics attending services.  Missionaries also warned Catholics against falling into the error that they could be responsible for their own spiritual health. 

A key Jesuit tactic in their battle against conformity was to exalt the suffering of the heroic martyrs punished by the government for their dedication to their faith.  Catholics in England were enjoined to accept penalties for recusance as God’s gift to the faithful.  Loss of property and relationships were akin to the vows of cloistered monks and nuns.  Recusants could thus expect heavenly rewards for their suffering in England. Missionary tracts urged recusants to reject personal associations with conformists, arguing that conscientious Catholics should pursue total separation from Protestants and conforming Catholics in order to maintain their own spiritual purity.

Being a recusant was not the only form of dissent open to Catholics.  Some Catholics expressed their dissent by refusing to participate in Protestant communion rituals.  Conformists could also remain silent during responsorial liturgies, or could make a public declaration of dissent before their congregation rather than remaining absent from church services.  Finally, some Catholic families chose to have husbands attend services while wives became recusants.  Wives then became responsible for raising children in religion.  Some Catholic theologians argued that these lesser forms of dissent were acceptable for normal people, particularly landed gentry.  Extreme measures like recusancy were necessary only for clergy and magistrates, because it represented the perfection of the Catholic faith in England.  Only those mentally and spiritually prepared for the great sacrifice of matyrdom should embark on this course.  Those needing to demonstrate political loyalty could attend church services as long as they did not partake of the sacraments.  Conformists had this leeway for two reasons: persecution of recusants, and the facts that laws requiring church attendance were solely designed as tests of loyalty to the state.

Catholics were not the only religious dissenters in sixteenth and seventeenth century England.  Puritans also either refused to attend services conducted in an overly ceremonial manner or still dependent on some religious iconography.  When puritans did attend services, they were frequently disruptive, denouncing “false doctrine”.  The presence of conforming Catholics was also offensive to puritans.  Anglicans sometimes viewed puritan non-conformity the same way they viewed Catholic recusants: as a plot to damage the church.  Lancelot Andrewes went further to describe puritan focus on inward religion and the gospels as a form of idolatry, and an act of denial of the totality of God’s creation.

            

Andrewes also argued that Puritan non-conformity could lead to rebellion against secular authority.  If anything, since puritans were Protestants, their non-conformity was more dangerous than that of recusants because it had the force of popular piety behind it.  Unlike Catholics who must wait for an invasion to free them, puritans could create an English army of rebellion. Anglicans also detected a dangerous disrespect for authority inherent in the doctrine of predestination.  If the elect were saved regardless of their actions on earth, they were free to ignore secular authorities.  Thus, like recusants who were due to perceived links to potential invaders, puritan non-conformists were suspect due to their perceived ability to rise in rebellion against the crown.

Walsham identifies several historiographical issues to contend with in examining the issue of church papists and recusants.  The first question is whether Jesuits in England acted as evangelists or acted more to restore parochial life and maintain England’s Catholics against the eventuality that Catholicism returned to England.  The evidence seems to indicate that Jesuits and other missionaries spent more time working to protect Catholics from the Protestant majority, as seen in their constant harping on the dangers of conformity.  Preaching against conformity in person or print was the Jesuits primary activity in England.

The dichotomy created by historians between lay and clerical responses to the issue of conformity is another challenging issue.  While the traditional interpretation is that conformity is the response of a leaderless laity, with the clergy arguing for non-conformance, Walsham argues that this is overly simplistic.  As penalties for recusance grew, the clergy were force to adopt a more tolerant attitude toward conformance, as did missionaries who understood that diatribes against lay people were likely to have an adverse affect. 

James I and English Absolutism

The recent calls for increased gun control after the Sandy Hook Massacre led one of my uncles to ask about the relationship between the English Civil War and the attitudes of the American colonists who broke away from England a century later.  That led me to take a renewed look at my notes on the Stuarts from the Fall of 2007.  I knew less than nothing about the period when I started the proseminar, so there may be some errors in my interpretation of the works I was dealing with....

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Absolutists based their argument on the theory of Divine Right of Kings.  Kings received their authority directly from God whether they became monarch through election or conquest.  The divine origin of the King’s authority meant that his power was boundless.  No laws could restrain him, and only God could judge the King’s actions or policies.  Further, the King’s mandate from God meant that it was sedition or even blasphemy to challenge the King’s decrees.  Absolutists argued the King granted his subjects as privileges their traditional rights of taxation only with consent of Parliament and imprisonment only through due process.  Anti-absolutists agreed that the monarch received his authority from God, but denied that this set him above the law, or that Parliament could not discuss or challenge his actions or policies.  The monarch did not grant immunity from imprisonment without cause or taxation without consent of Parliament as a privilege - those rights were established under England’s ancient Anglo-Saxon constitution.

Politics, particularly the issues of taxation and imprisonment, were the primary arena of conflict between the two ideologies.  Taxation became an issue for anti-absolutists when James I created new import duties without consulting Parliament.  Anti-absolutists argued that the import duties were a new tax, and that only Parliament, consisting of the House of Commons, House of Lords, and the King, could impose new taxes.  The absolutists, led by the King argued that the monarch had the right to act in the interests of state when Parliament was not in session.  Anti-absolutists responded that this tradition was intended only to be used in case of emergency to defend England from invasion, and that the King should call Parliament to request new taxes for all other purposes.  King James’ response to the challenge from anti-absolutists was to declare that the King could pass taxes on his own, as they were his right as monarch.

Parliament’s proper role in taxation took new meaning after Charles I collected a forced loan from wealthy landowners in 1626, and the King ordered five members of the gentry who refused to pay the loan as an illegal tax imprisoned.  When the knights’ lawyers requested writs of habeas corpus from the King’s Bench, the King refused to show cause for their imprisonment because he did not want the legality of the Forced Loan debated in court.  When the judges of the King’s Bench ruled only to withhold bail for the knights, the King sent a courtier to attempt the court documents so they showed that the judges ruled that the King could imprison individuals without cause.

The anti-absolutists in the House of Commons viewed these events as an attack on yet another of their ancient rights.  Charles I and his supporters fed the Commons’ fear by arguing that the King could imprison people without cause, impose taxes, and pass legislation without Parliament due to the divine origins of his power.  Further, taxes were his rightful due as monarch, and it was sedition to challenge his dictates or discuss his rightful prerogatives.  The proper role of Parliament was to discuss and vote on only those things that the King told it to discuss.

Conflict between absolutists and anti-absolutists was not restricted to the political arena, but also included the role of the church hierarchy.  Absolutists argued that as God’s representative on earth, the King occupied the top of the religious hierarchy, subordinate only to God.  This position allowed the monarch to dictate what ministers preached.  Absolutists believed that members of the hierarchy could wield temporal power to imprison or fine ministers or other individuals in ecclesiastical courts, and that it was legitimate for the hierarchy to remove benefices given to ministers that did not preach according to the canons.

Anti-absolutists took the opposite tack, arguing that the Church was independent of the King, and that it could excommunicate him if he merited it through impiety or action.  Further, the Church only possessed spiritual authority, not temporal authority.  Since they were not based in statute, the fines and imprisonments of the ecclesiastical courts were not legal, and the hierarchy did not have the authority to strip ministers of benefices bestowed upon them.  In effect, anti-absolutists believed that inheritances, tithes, and benefices were property, and subject to the common law.

There are two historiographical issues to contend with in when considering the conflict between absolutists and anti-absolutists in seventeenth century England: whether the conflict was primarily religious, and whether political conflict in England suddenly manifested shortly before 1642.  Sommerville argues that Congregationalists were such a small minority during the first half of the seventeenth century that the disagreement over the role of the Episcopal hierarchy was not the primary cause of the English Civil War.  The role of the King in the religious hierarchy remained a significant issue, as did the issue of the Pope’s power to depose monarchs, but neither was the driving issue toward open conflict.

Conrad Russell offers an alternate interpretation of the political struggles from 1600–1642 is that England’s laity was politically united, with absolutists restricted to the clergy.  Parliament widely accepted the theory that the people could depose a tyrant, which revisionists define as an absolute monarch who ruled poorly.  Sommerville dismisses the revisionist argument by attacking the restrictive definition of “absolutist” required to argue for political unity.  The revisionists define absolutists only as those who believe that the King can rule by fiat, and pass laws without resorting to Parliament.  In the revisionist interpretation, accepting the Divine Right of Kings to rule is not enough to define an argument as absolutist.  This narrow definition of “absolutist” excludes both Bodin and Bossuet, an apologist for Louis XIV of France, rendering it ineffective for describing the political challenges of the era.

Peace on Earth, Goodwill Toward Men

... and women, of course.

Linus' monologue from the Gospel of Luke on the meaning of Christmas is as religious a statement as you're likely to get on the Christian meaning of the holiday.  There are other celebrations associated with December 25th of the Julian calendar, so you can take whatever meaning you will.

Pagan Origins and Crīstesmæsse

A large part of the cultural conflict in the United States over the past decade has been the twin concepts of a "War on Christmas"and a need to "put the Christ back in Christmas".  As with the contentious issue over whether to abbreviate Christmas as "Xmas", the debate here stems from a rather profound ignorance of both the ancient and modern holidays celebrating the end of December and the start of a new year.  Not only did ancient Christians not celebrate Christmas, but the modern American and English celebrations of the holiday developed only with consumer culture and the mass media.  Indeed, we owe most of our conception of Christmas festivities to the esteemed Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and Clement C. Moore's (or maybe, Major Henry Livingston's) 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. 

The celebration of Christmas as the day Jesus was born is a surprisingly contentious issue.  We don't know the day or month of Jesus' birth - modern estimates based on clues from the Gospels range from March to as late as October, but make it clear that he was almost certainly not born in December.  The major clues relate to weather, animal husbandry, and the lack of a winter census.  Winter weather in Judea was cold and rainy, unsuitable for both travel and tending flocks in fields.  Since the Gospels (Luke 2:8) tell us that the shepherds were keeping the flocks in the fields at night to feed at the time of Jesus' birth.  The same goes for travel to Bethlehem for a census.  Even the Romans probably wouldn't force people to travel in bad weather for annual bookkeeping. Since the winter rains end before Passover and start in October, the shepherds weren't in the fields with their flocks if Jesus was born in December.  In the Old Testament both the book of Ezra and the Song of Solomon indicate that December was cold and Rainy, so the evidence against Jesus being born in December is pretty good.

So the question then, is where these celebrations come from?  Although I'm loathe to use it as a source, and I don't let my students use it as a crutch, Wikipedia has a good discussion of some of the circumlocutions that some early Christian thinkers went through to justify a December birth for Christ.  Sextus Julius Africanus suggested in 221 that Jesus was conceived at the spring equinox, and in 386, John Chrysotom argued that Jesus was conceived in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy with St. John the Baptist.  Other early christian theologians ridiculed the very idea of celebrating birthdays, so it is unclear why these two would try to find some justification for setting the date of Jesus' birth.

Christmas was celebrated by Christians only sporadically and locally in the ancient world, becoming important during the reign of the Emperor Constantine.  The reason for the emergence of Christmas under Constantine seems more like one of those conspiracy theories out of Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code than the development of a profoundly religious event.  Constantine ruled over a multi-religious empire that had multiple conflicting December/January religious festivals.  The most important were the celebrations of Saturnalia, the birth of Mithras, and the rebirth of Sol Invictus.  It is hard to imagine that the early Church designated December 25th, also the date set aside for the birthday celebrations of Mithras and Sol Invictus, was a coincidence.  Romans exerted a lot of social pressure on Christians to take part in the Saturnalia activities that occurred from the solstice to the new year, and by designating December 25th a day to celebrate the coming of the messiah, the Church allowed Christians to enjoy feasts and exchange gifts. Christianizing the existing pagan traditions allowed the faith both survive and spread. Still, Christmas was not a major and widespread holiday until the 9th century.

If you were expecting the Christmas controversy to end there, you'd be sadly mistaken.  Although Christians merrily co-opted the winter festivals of the local traditions they came across, including the Christmas tree, those very pagan traditions that they adopted became a source of renewed debate by the 16th century.  Geneva seems to be the location of the first strenuous objections to Christmas and other "Romish festivals and fasts", banning them in 1550, along with all previously held religious holidays other than Sunday observances.  It seems that the good fathers of Geneva hand't figured out that the Sabbath had been moved to Sunday by Constantine to coincide with other Roman observances, but they were serious about avoiding Catholic and pagan "superstitions".  John Knox and the leaders of the Scottish Reformation similarly denounced Catholic innovations such as "Feasts (as they term them) of Apostles, Martyrs, Virgins, of Christmas, Circumcision, Epiphany, Purification, and other fond feasts of our Lady." 

English Puritans also developed objections to Christmas celebrations, providing these arguments against them: 

(1.) No time of worship is sanctified, unless God has ordained it; (2.) unscriptural holidays are a threat to the proper observance of the Lord's day because these holidays tend to eclipse the sanctity which belongs only to the Lord's day, (3.) the observance of unscriptural holidays tends toward the super stition and innovation in worship which are characteristic of Roman Catholicism.

Any non-Biblical celebrations were a superstitious distraction from the serious business of regular worship, and to be avoided by all right-thinking Christians.  Once the Puritans gained political power in England under Cromwell, they abolished Christmas celebrations, so from 1647, no official celebration of Christmas occurred. Things in Puritan dominated colonies in the New World were little different.  Christmas celebrations were banned in the Massachusetts Bay Colony starting in 1621.  From 1659-1681 people caught celebrating Christmas were fined five shillings, while those caught wassailing were arrested. Boston itself banned public Christmas displays for an extended period of time, scheduling classes in schools on December 25th until 1870.  Similarly, Congress regularly met on Christmas day until 1855.  Alabama was the first state to declare a Christmas holiday in 1836. The Puritan war on Christmas lasted through 1870 when it became a Federal holiday.

The major source of American Christmas celebrations was the former Dutch colony of New York, which produced festivities having little to do with the Christian tradition, but had a lot in common with German and Norse winter festivals.  Santa Claus, in the Dutch tradition, seems equal parts Saint Nicholas and Odin until civilized in the modern form by Moore/Livingston.  In England Christmas made a 19th century resurgence thanks to Charles Dickens and Prince Albert.  Queen Victoria's Prince Consort was German, and brought German Christmas traditions to his new English family.  His practice of giving Christmas gifts to their children sparked a fad of gift-giving in much the same way that people adopt the practices of modern celebrities.

Dickens both promoted Christmas celebrations and showed what Christmas day was like in Victorian England - it was normal to expect that merchants like butchers would be open for business.  How else was Ebeneezer Scrooge going to purchase a prize goose from the shop down the street, unless you assume that the butcher was living above the shop and interrupted his family's celebrations to make a sale?  The popularity of Dickens' and Moore's work combined with the advertising of the Coca-Cola Corporation and the development of leisure time and consumer culture to produce the modern Christmas holiday season.  When conservative Christians rail against consumerism and a "secular" assault on Christmas, they are fighting to preserve a tradition that doesn't really exist, or perhaps trying to establish a closer connection between the festivities and their modern interpretations of Christianity.

Nonsense holiday controversies, or keeping the Chi in "Χριστός"

I'm not sure how, but until this year, I managed to get through over four decades of life without learning that there was a controversy over the use of the word "Xmas" as an abbreviation for Christmas.  As is no surprise, this controversy is the creation of evangelical pastors who somehow got through seminary without even a smattering of the history of their faiths.  It seems that these angry, but well-meaning, fellows somehow think that the abbreviation "Xmas" was somehow popularized by the heathen to take the "Christ" out of "Christmas" as part of a plot to secularize the nation.  There are a whole slew of problems associated with how both Christians and non-Christians perceive this particular holiday, but today we'll stick with this Xmas thing.

The root of the problem is that the spelling of "Christ" is different in Latin-derived alphabets like English than is it is in Greek, the language of the New Testament.  In Greek, it is spelled "Χριστός", or "Christos".  The first letter is "Chi", or in Greek "Χ". In the ancient and medieval world, this was as obvious to educated folks as it was to Christians. Ancient Christians used the "X" (Chi) and the "P" (Rho) letters as a symbolic shorthand for Christ (the labarum) that still exists within the Catholic Church in its use on vestments and altar service.  The Chi-Rho symbol is also that which reportedly appeared to the Emperor Constantine in a dream before the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312 A.D., where it was later claimed that he had his soldiers paint it upon their shields.

So, at least in the ancient world, the use of the "X" was a common abbreviation for Christ and Christians.  The use of the Chi as an abbreviation after that point is a bit more complicated, but historians generally agree that by the fifteenth century, the term Xmas was widely used.  Religious abbreviations were common due to the difficulty in reproducing manuscripts in scriptoria, ink was expensive, as was parchment and paper.  That meant that in Gregorian chants and other documents, the monks that made copies relied on abbreviations to reduce the time and cost to reproduce their works. Other examples include "Dne" for "domine" and "ala" for "alleluia".  We can definitively date various uses of the "X" in abbreviations for Christmas in England (as "Xp̄es mæsse") at least as far back as 1021 when it appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The expense of printing the entire word "Christmas" was such that even after the Gutenberg's development of the movable-type printing press in 1453, even the church was using Christmas in its documents. 

Of course, even the word "Christos" is a title, not the actual name for Jesus, in either historical or Biblical terms.  "Christos" is Greek for "the anointed one". I would be willing to wager that most Americans, even devout Christians, don't understand that distinction when they are arguing about keeping the "Christ" in "Christmas".  Of course, there's really a whole different argument about how, why, and when Christmas should be celebrated.

Violence and the Culture of Gaming

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Massacre, people looking for a simple and easy explanation for the inexplicable have again turned their sights on video game violence.  Rather than get immediately defensive, gamers and the gaming industry should take this as an opportunity to examine both the games and culture of video gaming.  This doesn't mean agreeing with opportunistic politicians, religious figures, or special interests that violent video games are to blame for mass shooting, but taking an honest look at our hobby.

Americans have a long history of blaming violence on recent cultural phenomenon that conservative elements of society with don't understand or find objectionable.  Just in the past century, we've seen this with jazz, heavy metal, Dungeons and Dragons, and now video games.  The Columbine Massacre aimed the spotlight at video games due to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's fascination with Doom, at the time an innovative networkable first person shooter that pitted players against each other or against demonic adversaries in bloody mayhem.  Since then, each new mass shooting (and there have been many) leads panicked non-gamers to blame the games rather than the players.  This issue of panic is an important one to understand when discussing video games and violence.

Tyler Black is Clinical Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Emergency Unit at BC Children's Hospital in Vancouver argues that in the past two decades video games have reached the level of a "moral panic" in Western cultures. Essentially, despite the ubiquity of video games in American culture, people believe that video games are inherently bad for children in the same way that people used to argue that television, jazz, novels, and Shakespeare were bad for them (we're speaking in terms of morality here, not obesity or attention deficit).  Parents and grandparents, Black argues, aren't comfortable or familiar with video games, so they view them as scary influences on their children.  Parental fear is enhanced by changes in the realism and violence in games, despite evidence showing that society is far less violent than in the past.

The research on the relationship between gaming and violence is doesn't really point to a connection between violence and gaming, and despite Senator Jay Rockefeller's claims that research showing a negative correlation between video games and youth violence is flawed, Black and Texas A&M's Christopher Ferguson contend that a publication bias against studies that show no connection between gaming and violence exists in peer-reviewed journals.  Black believes that in the constellation of contributors to violence - genetics, abuse, education, social situation, etc... that video game exposure to violence is likely to rank fairly low in terms of causing violence.

Black, along with Dr. Matthew Chow, believes that gamers exhibit behaviors that go far against the antisocial image the media portrays.  At a recent visit to gaming convention Pax West, Chow says that the gamers he encountered were helpful, patient when waiting in lines, complimentary of each others' skills in games and costuming.  He argues that games have evolved from a solitary activity in the basement to a cooperative experience in which people expect to play together and form communities, and develop rules of behavior.  Chow contends that folks exhibiting antisocial behavior become isolated within the gaming community after causing problems.  Even in shooters like Call of Duty or Battlefield, gamers exhibit prosocial behaviors by fighting common enemies, capturing objectives, or reviving teammates.

None of this is to say that gaming, and gaming communities, are perfect examples of communal existence and cooperation.  Most gamers have run into "griefers" who delight in ruining the game for the folks trying to relax enjoy a few hours of entertainment, the "teabaggers" who feel the need to show their dominance by squatting in the faces of downed opponents, or the foul-mouthed misogynists that inhabit almost every gaming server and community.  However, gamers themselves, motivated by their disgust at the antics of the more loathsome of their peers and their attacks on female gamers have started to take action on their own to combat these problems.

Winda Bernedetti reports that some gamers have begun rejecting the senseless violence of some games, notably the violent ending of the trailer for Last of Us, a post-apocalyptic game, which shows players shooting a prone opponent in the face with a shotgun.  Many gamers reacted even more negatively to Sony's violent trailer for Hitman: Absolution, which showed the protagonist graphically butchering a group of assassins "disguised" as provocatively dressed nuns (Really? Since when do nuns dress like prostitutes?). These are far from the only recent examples of problematic portrayals of violence in video games.  The most notorious may be the "No Russian" mission in Modern Warfare 2, in which players accompany a terrorist group determined to frame the United States for a terrorist massacre in an airport (video).  Excoriated in the media, the game still sold extremely well, with the sequel earning over $500 million its first weekend.  

I was so opposed to the scene, which the problematic plot used to justify the world turning its back on the United States and allow Russia to invade the United States, that I refused to purchase the game, and played it only when given a copy by a friend.  Even then, it remained in its packaging until I played the campaign through in a fit of boredom (and having forgotten which game had the horrendous mission).  Luckily, I was able to complete the mission (and the game) without shooting any innocent civilians or police officers.  The biggest problem I had with the scene (other than being forced to participate in the slaughter of innocents) was that no matter what I did, nothing changed the outcome.  At the end, an airport is shot-up, dozens of civilians and  cops dead, and an American soldier framed by the terrorists for the massacre.

Gamers are also questioning the misogyny and bigotry that frequently appears in voice and text chat during games.  With the release of Halo 4, 343 Industries head Bonnie Ross and Halo 4 Executive Producer Kiki Wolfkill denounced the bigotry and bullying common on Xbox Live.  Halo's developers served their costumers notice that the behavior that keeps female gamers from using microphones unless playing with close friends would not be tolerated and could result in lifetime bans.  To be sure, this is really just enforcing Microsoft's terms of service for Xbox Live, but the public change of attitude is important.  It's not just women who find the Xbox Live environment offensive - I only use voice communication with friends, frequently silencing others when playing alone because I just don't need to hear the racist, homophobic, profane rants of other players.  It's especially bad when coming from squeaky-voiced kids.

Attacks on women playing and working in the industry are difficult to ignore.  Just take a quick gander at what Bioware developer Jennifer Hepler faced when she said that she enjoys writing the content of games, but not playing them. As if being called a cancer online was not enough, her attackers left her obscene and threatening voicemails.  Casual sexism even comes from the sales drones populating gaming booths at major conferences - this is the same type of thing women frequently face at car dealerships and repair shops - and developers who talk about "girlfriend" mode. For a real taste of what many women face when gaming online, cruise over to Fat, Ugly, or Slutty, a blog in which women showcase the abuse they receive if they dare allow other gamers find out that they are actually female.

Fighting games, particularly at the professional level, may have the most abusive, misogynist gaming culture of them all.  I don't play these games since I don't find them appealing, but Ars technica's Kyle Orland provides a great discussion of the genre and its culture. If I had kids, they wouldn't be playing these games, but to be honest, they wouldn't be playing Call of Duty or Battlefield, either due to the language or violence.  These games are rated-M for a reason. 

Realizing that real change comes only from within, some gamers have begun to work together to change the culture of gaming.  Gamers Against Bigotry created a pledge (with 2,082 signatures) urging gamers to not only avoid bigoted language, but to actually fight it when they come across it in games.  It reads:

As a gamer, I realize I contribute to an incredibly diverse social network of gamers around the world, and that my actions have the ability to impact others. In effort to make a positive impact, and to create a community that is welcoming to all, I pledge to not use bigoted language while gaming, online and otherwise.

Bigoted language includes, but is not limited to, slurs based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and disability.

GAB also offers commentary on why the casual use of the word "rape" in games is a problem. A really over-simplified explanation is that it's a hugely bad idea to both minimize rape as a concept by using it to casually describe things, and similarly horrible to encourage young men to use it as slang meaning "to dominate".  In the United States, we have a difficult time discussing and prosecuting rape as a crime, and even dealing with it appropriately in a political context (as the 2012 campaigns showed very clearly), so diminishing it in this way is a really bad cultural construct.  It also isn't an inherent or traditional part of gaming culture,no matter what ill-informed gamers might say.  Go read the complete explanation of why using the word "rape" so casually is such a bad idea.  It does a far better job of it than I can.

My point here is that while there's no concrete link between video game violence and mass shootings, that doesn't mean that there aren't real problems in gaming, and that the tragedy in Sandy Hook doesn't provide us with an opportunity to start dealing with those problems.  There's no quick and easy solution, but it is important enough that gamers and those who love them need to get involved to find solutions.