The Naqshbandiyya Mujaddidiyya order is among the world's largest and most geographically widespread Sufi orders, but it has long been assumed to be absent among Chinese-speaking Muslims. Despite a handful of isolated references to local Chinese Mujaddidī groups in studies of particular communities, comprehensive histories of Chinese Islams make no mention of the Mujaddidiyya, and histories of the Naqshbandiyya Mujaddidiyya make no reference to Chinese-speaking Muslims. This article demonstrates that the Mujaddidiyya order has not only been present at various times and places among Chinese Muslims, but has also played a role in the development of nearly all major strains of Islam in China proper, including those commonly known as the Gedimu, Jahriyya, Khāfiyya, Qādiriyya, and Ikhwān. The article also uses new primary sources to provide an account of how a Mujaddidī order expanded into Eastern Turkistan and was transmitted from there to Muslims in China proper. It shows that adaptation to local environments created distinctive forms of Mujaddidī Sufism, highlights Hui-Uyghur connections, and argues that South Asia deserves a central place in any account of Islam in China.

Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA, recently installed a MIni CArbon DAting System (MICADAS) with a gas interface system (GIS) for determining the 14C content of CO2 gas released by the acid dissolution of biogenic carbonates. We compare 48 paired graphite, GIS, and direct carbonate 14C determinations of individual mollusk shells and echinoid tests. GIS sample sizes ranged between 0.5 and 1.5 mg and span 0.1 to 45.1 ka BP (n = 42). A reduced major axis regression shows a strong relationship between GIS and graphite percent Modern Carbon (pMC) values (m = 1.011; 95% CI [0.997–1.023], R2 = 0.999) that is superior to the relationship between the direct carbonate and graphite values (m = 0.978; 95% CI [0.959-0.999], R2 = 0.997). Sixty percent of GIS pMC values are within ±0.5 pMC of their graphite counterparts, compared to 26% of direct carbonate pMC values. The precision of GIS analyses is approximately ±70 14C yrs to 6.5 ka BP and decreases to approximately ±130 14C yrs at 12.5 ka BP. This precision is on par with direct carbonate and is approximately five times larger than for graphite. Six Plio-Pleistocene mollusk and echinoid samples yield finite ages when analyzed as direct carbonate but yield non-finite ages when analyzed as graphite or as GIS. Our results show that GIS 14C dating of biogenic carbonates is preferable to direct carbonate 14C dating and is an efficient alternative to standard graphite 14C dating when the precision of graphite 14C dating is not required.

Paul's letters depict gentiles and Jews with different characteristics of sin. This article focuses on Paul's rhetoric about Jewish shortcomings and argues that he has an eschatological myth of Jewish sin: it is the period in the Jewish deity's plan when he has hardened his people into disobedience and disloyalty. While scholars have traditionally tried to connect Paul's ideas about Jewish sin to deficiencies of historical Jews, Paul's claims are primarily animated by his Jewish eschatological scheme and competitive rhetorical needs. Paul re-emerges as a Jewish writer within his competitive social landscape wherein ethnic differentiation was an expected way of imagining the human and divine realms.

In 2013, 36 Ancestors of African descent were identified in an unmarked eighteenth-century burial ground during construction in Charleston, South Carolina. The site, later referred to as the Anson Street African Burial Ground, was buried beneath the growing city and forgotten in the centuries that followed. The ethical treatment of these ancestral remains was of paramount importance to our community. Historically, narratives relating to the lives of African descendant people in Charleston have been inadequately documented and shared. For these reasons, we engaged the local African American community in a multifaceted memorialization process. Together, we sought to sensitively ensure that the Ancestors’ identities and lives were fully explored according to the collective descendant community's wishes. To this end, we involved the community in researching and celebrating the Ancestors’ lives through arts and education programs and analyzed their and community members’ DNA to elucidate their ancestry. Our engagement initiatives increased access for all ages to archaeological, historical, and genetic research and encouraged active participation in the design of a permanent memorial. The Anson Street African Burial Ground Project provides a successful example of community-engaged activist archaeology focused on honoring the Ancestors and their descendants.

In 1893, Simon Pokagon, a leader of the “unremoved” Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, published a birchbark pamphlet titled The Red Man’s Rebuke. This story condemned settlers for dispossessing Native peoples of their lands and removing them west of the Mississippi River in service of their “civilization.” Pokagon’s Rebuke remains one of the most cited texts in Native American history. But what happened to Pokagon’s message after the Chicago World’s Fair? This paper analyzes five Potawatomi Removal stories told at the turn of the twentieth century. It argues that Midwestern settlers found their answer to “the Indian side” of the Removal question by telling the “Potawatomi” perspective of local history; featuring “authentic” representations of Native peoples in their stories and as witnesses to their efforts; perpetuating a myth that all the Potawatomi had been removed; condemning the actions of their “dishonorable and dishonest” forefathers; and publicly acknowledging that they were occupying stolen land. By claiming that the sons of the present were not the forefathers of the past, non-Indians were settling the story of Potawatomi Removal. In the process, they gave their community and their region a past that was simultaneously romantic and tragic, positioning themselves as its inheritors and interpreters.

In 1891, when U.S. realtors attempted to establish their first national professional organization, the National Real Estate Association (NREA), they turned to history to provide a shared intellectual foundation to justify collective organization. Though the NREA was only in operation for a short period, the ways its members invoked history illuminate how key assumptions about race, property, and citizenship became central to a nascent national real estate industry, predating the more well-known real estate professionalization projects of the twentieth century. History united members from different regions with little in common who were skeptical of the need to form a national institution. They used history in three ways to sustain the organization: repeating narratives, theorizing historical change, and constructing historical subjects. They infused each of these with an imperial worldview fashioned from competing lines of thought in circulation at the time. Among these were sectional reconciliation, manifest destiny, and narratives of civilizational progress. Through their actions, they embedded white supremacist Gilded Age and Progressive Era formulations of history into real estate via the new institution.

This essay returns to a largely forgotten achievement of mid-twentieth-century philosophical theology, Richard Kroner’s Culture and Faith (1951) and the “philosophy of faith” presented therein. It focuses on Kroner’s idea of religious imagination as the inspired medium of revelation. It considers implications of this idea with regard to religious epistemology and theological language. In doing so, it puts Kroner in conversation with John Caputo, Iain McGilchrist, and Kroner’s friend and colleague Paul Tillich.