This article examines three highly successful English broadside-ballads about Protestant martyrs of the mid-sixteenth century and seeks to explain their evident popularity. It argues that ballads were very important in encouraging people to think about martyrs and identify as Protestants, and that the highlighted examples have been either overlooked or underestimated by scholars. The songs also shed new light on commonplace religious tastes and preoccupations, revealing an apparent preference for female martyrs and an apparent distaste for gruesome detail. In both respects, the ballads are contrasted with John Foxe’s much more famous ‘Book of martyrs’.

This article assesses the relationship between the first four bishops of the English Mission in Korea, Japanese colonial rule and the Korean independence movement from 1905 to 1945. It is proposed that the bishops attempted to walk a precarious tightrope between the demands of the colonial government, bent on assimilating Korea, including the Churches, and the ardent aspirations of Koreans, including Christians, who sought to resist colonial rule. The authors conclude that this was a complicated policy which they did not always pull off but one which can be judged as successful overall.

In this article, the author develops an Islamic normative legal theoretical framework by using three key Islamic methodological approaches—(1) juridical theory of law (uṣūl), (2) legal maxims (qawāʿid), and (3) purposive-based theory (maqāṣid)—in light of Ronald Dworkin’s notions of rules, principles, and policies, respectively. While uṣūl is used to develop rules, qawāʿid and maqāṣid provide the normative values that govern rulemaking. In addition to presenting a coherent model of Islamic normative legal theory, the author examines legitimacy issues of Islamic law that relate to links of rules to sharīʿa revealed texts and applies the Islamic normative legal theoretical framework to contemporary rulings on the environment, organ transplants, and Islamic finance. The case studies show that using the integrated normative framework would yield more ethical rulings than those that focus on juridical methods (uṣūl) only. The author argues that while the extent of legal legitimacy can vary across different rulings, the application of the Islamic normative legal framework ensures normative legitimacy in all cases, ensuring the moral character of Islamic law.

Panentheists advocate for a unique and rival view of God and his relationship to the cosmos. A common panentheistic slogan says the cosmos is in God, but God is more than the cosmos. God is simultaneously transcendent and immanent. However, it’s unclear how we should interpret this slogan. Focusing on key passages in the Bhagavad-Gīta, I propose three desiderata that a minimal account of the panentheist’s God-world relation must adhere to and argue that the relation of metaphysical grounding meets all three. On my view, panentheism is the view that God’s existence grounds the existence of the cosmos. I develop this view in opposition to rival accounts and argue that we can plausibly demarcate panentheism from traditional theism in terms of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo.