Religion Past and Present
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Subject: Religious Studies
Edited by: Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning†, Bernd Janowski and Eberhard Jüngel
Religion Past and Present (RPP) Online is the online version of the updated English translation of the 4th edition of the definitive encyclopedia of religion worldwide: the peerless Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG). This great resource, now at last available in English and Online, Religion Past and Present Online continues the tradition of deep knowledge and authority relied upon by generations of scholars in religious, theological, and biblical studies. Including the latest developments in research, Religion Past and Present Online encompasses a vast range of subjects connected with religion.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
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Religion Past and Present (RPP) Online is the online version of the updated English translation of the 4th edition of the definitive encyclopedia of religion worldwide: the peerless Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (RGG). This great resource, now at last available in English and Online, Religion Past and Present Online continues the tradition of deep knowledge and authority relied upon by generations of scholars in religious, theological, and biblical studies. Including the latest developments in research, Religion Past and Present Online encompasses a vast range of subjects connected with religion.
Subscriptions: see brill.com
Latin American and Caribbean Church Music
(280 words)
[German Version] In the course of the colonization of and mission work within Latin America, indigenous music styles developed from the contact of European church music with indigenous elements. Spanish missionaries introduced Spanish-style worship song. Cathedral choir schools and choirs were established in centers such as Buenos Aires, Caracas, Mexico City, and Rio de Janeiro. Native musicians thus came into contact with Andalusian and Castilian liturgical music as well as settings of the mass r…
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Religion Past and Present
Latin American Bishops' Plenary Council
(306 words)
[German Version] (Rome, 1899). The plenary council of the Latin American bishops was the most significant event in the Catholic ¶ Church of Latin America in the 19th century. Pope Leo XIII convened the council with the papal missive
Cum diuturnum of Dec 25, 1898; it met in the Latin American College in Rome from May 5 to Jul 9, 1899. The 13 archbishops rotated as chairmen of the assembly of 40 bishops from 18 countries; those who could not attend the council were able to express themselves in writing. In the course of 29 general congr…
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Religion Past and Present
Latin America, Theology in
(1,714 words)
[German Version] I. Recognition of the Regionality of Theology – II. Periods and Foci of Interest – III. The Ecumenical Picture – IV. Permeability
I. Recognition of the Regionality of Theology Because the major religions have crossed linguistic, cultural, and political boundaries, they have always reflected the tension between their message, which claims universality, and the development of regional and local traditions. Latin America's interest in the question of the local, regional, and even continental shape of Christi…
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Religion Past and Present
Latitudinarianism
(480 words)
[German Version] Latitudinarianism, from Lat.
latitudo (“breadth”), a moderate teaching, confessionally tolerant and open to the insights of modern science, introduced in the 17th century by Anglican clergy at Cambridge. It was opposed by both the Puritan (I) teachers at the universities and conservative high-church royalists (High Church movement). The advocates of Latitudinarianism were first identified in a letter written by Simon Patrick, a leading member of the party (later bishop of Chichester, then Ely), published under the title
A Brief Account of the New Sect of “…
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Religion Past and Present
Latomus, Jacobus
(198 words)
[German Version] (Jacques Masson; around 1475, Cambron, Belgium – May 29, 1544, Leuven), studied the
artes liberales in Paris and earned his master's after 1500 in Leuven. Awarded the Dr. theol. in 1519, he became rector of the University of Leuven in 1537. Latomus participated as a theological adviser in the ¶ proceedings of the Inquisition against Jacobus Praepositus and W. Tyndale. In his
De trium linguarum et studii theologici ratione dialogus (1518), he attacked the philological method of Erasmus of Rotterdam and opposed it with the ecclesial tradition. In 152…
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Religion Past and Present
Latourette, Kenneth Scott
(317 words)
[German Version] (Aug 9, 1884, Oregon City, OR – Dec 26, 1968, Oregon City, OR) was an American historian of China and of the expansion of Christianity. After studying and graduating at Yale and after working as travel administrator for the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM) for one year, Latourette went as a missionary to Hunan Province in China in 1910, to teach at the China branch of Yale. He returned to the United States in 1912 after a severe illness. In 1916 he began teaching at Dennison Unive…
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Religion Past and Present
La Tour, Georges du Mesnil de
(215 words)
[German Version] (1593, Vic sur Seille, Lorraine – Jan 30, 1652, Lunéville) was only rediscovered in the 20th century as the most significant and individual Caravaggesque artist of France. Under whose guidance he was trained is unknown. In 1617, he married the noblewoman Diana Le Nerf from the city of Lunéville in Lorraine and settled there (definitively in 1622). It was in this city that he very successfully (1639: court painter) created his dream-like and yet also realistic nocturnal paintings. …
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Religion Past and Present
Laubach, Frank Charles
(183 words)
[German Version] (Feb 2, 1884, Benton, PA – Nov 6, 1970, Syracuse, NY) was an American Congregational missionary (Congregationalism) to the Philippines between 1915 and 1931. Educated at Princeton University, Union Theological Seminary, and Columbia University, Laubach began his missionary career on Mindanao, Philippines, pioneering the literacy method that now bears his name. The method associates sounds with phonetic symbols by means of simple illustrated charts, utilizing primers to encourage r…
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Religion Past and Present
Laud, William
(275 words)
[German Version] (Oct 7, 1573, Reading, England – Jan 10, 1645, London), archbishop of Canterbury. Educated at St. John's College, Oxford, he opposed, early in life, the prevailing Calvinistic theology. Of considerable talent and learning, he was appointed to a rapid succession of ecclesiastical appointments, including dean of Gloucester (1616), bishop of St. David's (1621), Bath and Wells (1626), and London (1628), and finally archbishop of Canterbury (1633). His various attempts to impose liturg…
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Religion Past and Present
Laughter and Weeping
(373 words)
[German Version] Laughter and weeping are usually regarded as exclusively human expressions. They involve basic physiological processes, appear in social contexts and reflect culturally specific meanings. Laughter and weeping may appear as elements in myths and rituals. Sometimes they are obligatory, other times restricted. Laughter may be a characteristic of the divine world. The gods of ancient Greece laughed boisterously. Apuleius of Madaura and Plutarch both mention a god of laughter and, in a…
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Religion Past and Present
Laura
(326 words)
[German Version] In Eastern monasticism, a laura (or lavra) is a particular type of monastic community; it differs from cenobitic monasticism (Cenobites) in practicing a moderate form of anachoretic life (Anchorites). Greek λαὑρα/
laúra means “alley” or “passage”; originally it denoted a colony of hermits consisting of scattered cells connected by a path. The term came into use in Byzantine Palestine in the 4th century. The lavrite system is associated with the name of Chariton, who established monastic life in the Judean Deser…
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Religion Past and Present
Laurentius Andreae
(326 words)
[German Version] (Lars Andersson; c. 1470 – Apr 14, 1552, Strängnäs, Sweden). After studies at Rostock, Andreae received his M.A. from Leipzig in 1498. In 1501/1502 he was appointed secretary to the bishop of Strängnäs and papal nuncio in Rome; c. 1518–1538 he served as archdeacon in both Strängnäs and Uppsala. In 1523 he was made secretary to King Gustav and a member of the Council of the Realm. He was dismissed in 1531 and condemned to death in Örebro, along with O. Petri, on the charge of
lèse majesté; he ¶ was pardoned after paying a fine. The king's letter of Nov 2, 1523 proposing…
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Religion Past and Present
Lausanne Covenant
(281 words)
[German Version] (1974). The
Lausanne Covenant is the most significant document of Evangelical missionary theology and an important instrument of Evangelical cooperation (Evangelicalism: IV). It was presented in 1974 at the Congress for World Evangelism in Lausanne (
Let the Earth Hear His Voice), organized by Billy Graham, to be signed by participants and sympathizers as a personal covenant with God and each other “to pray, to plan and to work together for the evangelization of the whole world.” Not only in its emphasis on the authority…
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Religion Past and Present
Lausanne, University
(555 words)
[German Version] A year after the annexation of Vaud in 1536, the Bernese council established an academy in Lausanne, whose primary purpose was the training of Reformed clergy for the Francophone territories under Bernese rule. Until the Academy of Geneva (II) was founded in 1559, Lausanne was the only school of Protestant theology in the Francophone region, in which theology was taught along with the propaedeutic philosophical and humanistic subjects. At the outset, P. Viret taught theology and K…
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Religion Past and Present
Laval, François de Montmorency
(185 words)
[German Version] (Apr 30, 1623, Montigny-sur-Aure, France – May 6, 1708, Quebec, Canada) was the first bishop of Quebec. Laval was trained for the priesthood in the premier Jesuit schools and was sent as vicar apostolic (Vicar, Apostolic) to New France in 1659. In Quebec he established the parish system, built schools, and founded the Seminary of Quebec, the heart of his design to build a Catholic culture. He struggled with merchants and politicians who resisted his attempts to stop the trade in l…
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Religion Past and Present
Lavater, Johann Kaspar
(421 words)
[German Version] (Nov 15, 1741, Zürich – Jan 2, 1801, Zürich). After studying theology at the Collegium Carolinum, Lavater undertook an educational tour to Germany, staying several months in Barth with J. Spalding and in Berlin, where he visited ¶ M. Mendelssohn. During his lengthy period of candidacy he was an active writer. Around 1768 Lavater – up to this point symphatetic to a moderate Enlightenment – underwent a religious reorientation: his attention became focused on Christ, whose continued work both in history and in the presen…
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Religion Past and Present
Lavigerie, Charles Martial Allemand
(301 words)
[German Version] (Oct 31, 1825, Huire, near Bayonne – Nov 25, 1892, Algiers), cardinal (1881) and missionary. Lavigerie, whose father was a middle-class government official, was ordained priest in 1849 and appointed to a professorship in ¶ church history at the Sorbonne in 1854. Besides being a scholar, he was both an effective church politician and missionary organizer. Appointed archbishop of Algiers in 1867, a year later he founded the missionary society of the White Fathers, followed a year later by the White Sisters. In 1884 h…
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Religion Past and Present