This article examines sermons for the crusade against the Hussite king of Bohemia, George of Poděbrady, preached by Thomas Harder, an Augustinian canon and parish priest in Klosterneuburg, in the summer of 1467. These texts give us a direct insight into how preachers in fifteenth-century parishes might have dealt with the general commission to publicize the crusade, as they incorporate the crusade agenda into the pastoral content. Like his twelfth and thirteenth-century predecessors, Thomas Harder knew how to exploit the penitential and edifying potential of the crusade, combined with concerns for individual religious improvement and moral reform. Through an analysis of intertextual links, this study shows that he also systematically gathered, processed and disseminated topical information relevant to the fight against Bohemian heresy. Although he followed in the footsteps of high medieval crusade preachers in the themes he addressed, he also drew on more contemporary and local sources to inform his discourse and provide explanation of the immediate political circumstances.

Why could politicians of religious minority backgrounds become national leaders in some countries soon after modern representative institutions were adopted, whereas in some other countries, almost all the national leaders have been from the religious majority background for decades if not centuries? I argue that the most important factor explaining the incidence of national leaders of a religious minority background or lack thereof is whether the main adversary in the constitutive conflict that established the nation-state was of the same religious sectarian background or not. Nations established in a constitutive conflict against an adversary of the same religion are much more likely to have national leaders of a religious minority background. Furthermore, political leaders of religious minority backgrounds have three “secular” paths out of their marginality, which is also determined by the combination and nature of the primary external and internal conflict of the nation. I examine these paths through the cases of Britain (liberalism), France (socialism), and Hungary and Italy (nationalism). Finally, I examine a world-historical example of pattern change, the rise of Catholic-origin national leaders in previously Protestant-led Germany, which was due to a new constitutive conflict (World War II and the Holocaust) that altered the national-religious configuration.

Eric Mascall and Karl Barth shared a common concern with the influence of liberal Protestantism on their churches in England and Germany. They agreed this problem was best addressed through the lens of natural theology. Yet, while for Mascall a Thomistically informed understanding of natural theology was the best way to counteract liberal Protestantism’s influence on the Church, for Barth, natural theology was to blame for the Church’s confusion. The concern this paper raises was Barth’s sharp delineation between human reason and divine revelation in the end, complicit with the ontological duality of modernity that was the basis of the liberal Protestantism he was rejecting? By dealing with modernity on its own terms, Barth undermined the capacity of the Church’s ministry of Word and Sacrament to be effective agents of personal transformation. Whereas Mascall’s realistic ontology not only repudiates the idealist foundations of liberal Protestantism but also offers the Church the necessary ontology foundation for understanding its ministry of Word and Sacrament as effective embodiments of God’s transforming grace.

Let X be a complex Banach space and B be a closed linear operator with domain $\mathcal{D}(B) \subset X,\,\, a,b,c,d\in\mathbb{R},$ and $0 \lt \beta \lt \alpha.$ We prove that the problem

\begin{equation*}u(t) -(aB+bI)(g_{\alpha-\beta}\ast u)(t) -(cB+dI)(g_{\alpha}\ast u)(t) = h(t), \quad t\geq 0,\end{equation*}

where $g_{\alpha}(t)=t^{\alpha-1}/\Gamma(\alpha)$ and $h:\mathbb{R}_+\to X$ is given, has a unique solution for any initial condition on $\mathcal{D}(B)\times X$ as long as the operator B generates an ad-hoc Laplace transformable and strongly continuous solution family $\{R_{\alpha,\beta}(t)\}_{t\geq 0} \subset \mathcal{L}(X).$ It is shown that such a solution family exists whenever the pair $(\alpha,\beta)$ belongs to a subset of the set $(1,2]\times(0,1]$ and B is the generator of a cosine family or a C0-semigroup in $X.$ In any case, it also depends on certain compatibility conditions on the real parameters $a,b,c,d$ that must be satisfied.

Let G be a semiabelian variety defined over a finite subfield of an algebraically closed field K of prime characteristic. We describe the intersection of a subvariety X of G with a finitely generated subgroup of $G(K)$.

Lara Buchak defends a Weight-Ranked Utilitarianism (WRU) that she says avoids the critique of Rawls’s that is sometimes thought fatal: utilitarianism unjustifiably blurs the distinction between persons. Buchak’s defence depends upon (i) a version of Harsanyi’s assumption that parties to a social contract should reason as if they have an equal chance of being anyone and (ii) a hypothesis she explores in a recent article. I argue that her assumption and hypothesis are untenable. WRU fails of the generality to which Buchak aspires because it fails for one of her most important cases: the distributive question posed by Rawls.

The Eastern population of the Lesser White-fronted Goose (EPLWFG) Anser erythropus is shared between Russia and China. The summer range of the EPLWFG has been recognised as a continuous area extending from the Olenyok River in the west to the Anadyr River in the east and northwards from 64°N. The aim of this study was to provide information on breeding behaviour; nest-sites, nesting habitats, and time of nesting; nesting success; timing of summer movements including moult migration; moult timing, duration, and moulting habitats; site fidelity; and the effect of human presence. To accomplish this, we combined the results from field surveys with GPS/GSM tracking. A total of 30 summer tracks from 19 individual EPLWFG were analysed. We estimated breeding propensity in 93.8% of adult LWFG, and this factor did not seem to depend on breeding success in the previous season. Reproductive success was 13.3% in all nesting attempts. Non-breeders arrived three-week later and departed a week earlier. The EPLWFG are highly mobile during the summer. The core moulting site for the entire EPLWFG was discovered by this study and is located along the lower reaches of the San-Yuryakh and Kyuanekhtyakh rivers flowing towards the Omulyakhskaya Bay of the East Siberian Sea. The EPLWFG flightless period was 24.8 ± 2.8 days. A part of failured EPLWFG (43.7 %) migrated back to its early summer breeding/staging site after having completed moult. The strong site fidelity (100%) of adult birds to both nesting and moulting sites promotes the formation of local breeding populations, which could be considered conservation units if genetic studies support this differentiation. The EPLWFG selects the remotest and least human-accessible area for their remigial moult, and the main site was discovered with the help of tracking.

There is evidence that learning a second language (L2) can shift cognition toward that predicted for the L2 and that this effect might vary with L2 proficiency, age of acquisition, length of immersion, etc. Here we explore the previously neglected variable of language instructional conditions. Participants categorized motion events in a triads-matching task after being trained on two novel linguistic labels highlighting (in)transitivity through one of three instructional conditions. Participants who learned the relevant knowledge under a meaning-focused instructional condition (memorizing meanings of exemplar sentences) showed a higher likelihood of categorizing based on motion (in)transitivity immediately after training than a control group; those who learned under a required rule search instructional condition showed this effect only after additional practice; while those who learned through another type of form-focused instructional condition (direct metalinguistic explanation) did not show this effect even after such practice. These differences were obtained despite the fact that the three groups were matched on awareness of the target system at the level of understanding and near-perfect performance on a grammaticality judgment task. The findings are discussed in terms of the depth of processing in instructed SLA and models of language–cognition interactions.

Multiple instances of safeguarding failures and criticisms of poor process and weak governance have afflicted the Church of England for many years, despite repeated assurances that ‘Lessons would be learned’. An Independent Safeguarding Board has been formed and then abolished without being replaced. A report by Professor Alexis Jay, former Chair of Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, recommending the creation of two independent charities to oversee Church safeguarding has been passed to a Response Group and is being resisted by various groups within the Church. This article examines issues of the management of safeguarding within the overall governance of the organisation, compares issues within the Church with those which have been exposed by the Post Office Horizon scandal and considers the potential role of the audit function to concern itself with safeguarding matters as part of its oversight of risk management and corporate governance.

The popularization of intersectionality within political science, feminist scholarship, and activism has constituted nothing less than a paradigm shift (Hancock 2007a). Politics & Gender has been a critical actor in enabling change within our discipline. However, this development has been hard won and there remains much to be done to operationalize intersectionality in line with Black feminist theory, and to center women of color and other intersectionally marginalized groups within scholarship. This article both traces the evolution of intersectional approaches within Politics & Gender over two decades and articulates pathways for future gender and politics research which aims to employ intersectionality. We employ quantitative and qualitative analysis of articles’ foci on different inequality structures and categories, their methodological approaches, and how they employ the concept of intersectionality. Subsequently, we argue in favor of approaches which center rather than include diverse intersectionally marginalized groups, emphasize the normative commitments of Black feminist theory to transformative justice rather than liberal inclusion, analyze intersectional structures and institutions as well as individual experience and identity, treat the constitution of categories and groups as contextual and contingent, dare to address the dangers of “women” as a theoretical starting point, and challenge fundamental raced-gendered assumptions of liberal democracy.

This article argues that E.L. Mascall develops the eschatology of C.S. Lewis to answer three common critiques of the consensual doctrine of hell. First, Mascall argues that human persons are capable of refusing the love of God because their potential reciprocal love depends on a freedom to give the self, or refuse to do so, in an indissoluble union. Second, the perfection of the new heavens and new earth is not a numerical perfection, and the numerical imperfection of finite creation demonstrates that this is not God’s goal in creation. Third, human nature and Christian revelation reveal that persons are made with the capacity to receive grace and participate in glory, but this reception and participation cannot be coerced. In order to test the plausibility of this position, I present David Bentley Hart’s critique of Lewis’s particularism and Mascall’s answer to such objections.

How might constitution-makers write “transformative constitutions”? Scholars and policymakers have looked to constitutional design as a mechanism for societal change, for example, promoting democracy, equality, and social rights. In these efforts, accountability has most often been limited to government actors. Yet, constitution-makers are increasingly introducing the “horizontal” application of rights, a potent tool for transformation whereby private actors also gain constitutional rights obligations. We argue that a key predictive element in introducing this mechanism is a meeting of the minds in constitution-making processes, where interests and mutual commitments from a broad cross-section of society are expressed at the negotiating table. We test our theory, employing cross-national data concerning the adoption of horizontal application over time, and examples from specific countries’ experiences. Our findings support our theory, suggesting that powerful articulation of interests by expert professionals in inclusive processes is a significant factor in reshaping citizen duties and, thus, transforming society.

This article makes a twofold contribution on the relationship between self/other securitisation, ambiguous threat constructions, and anxiety at the intersection of Securitisation Theory (ST) and Ontological Security Studies (OSS). First, we develop the concept topos of threat (TT) as a potent linguistic anchor in securitisation processes. TTs depict an entire self/other threat situation that warrants escape, serving identity needs while staying flexible and ambiguous. However, their frequent rhetorical deployment can blur the threat construction and increase anxiety: this challenges the classical scholarly assumption that antagonism necessarily alleviates anxiety. Second, we theorise metapolitics as an anxiety mediation strategy. Metapolitics is a mode of interpretation – a relentless analysis of surface clues to expose a deceptive, powerful adversary – which in the final event fails to alleviate anxiety. The dual practice of nurturing topoi of threat and metapolitics drives conflict because it sets in motion a vicious securitisation spiral that entrenches rigid patterns of self/other representation and fosters a bias of anticipating hostility. We employ abductive theorising: working with established theory alongside empirical discovery through a discourse analysis of Russia’s official rhetoric on NATO and the use of the TT ‘colour revolution’ since the conflict in Ukraine began in 2014.

Increased ultra-processed food (UPF) is associated with adverse health outcomes. However, with limitations in UPF evidence, and partial overlap between UK front-of-package labelling (FOPL) and degree of food processing, the value of food processing within dietary guidance is unclear. This study compared food and drink from the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) database based on micronutrient content, Nova classification and FOPL. The aim was to examine the micronutrient contributions of UK food and drink to UK government dietary micronutrient recommendations for adult females and males, aged 19–64 years, based on the degree of food processing and FOPL. NDNS items were coded into minimally processed food (MPF), processed culinary ingredients, processed food (PF) and UPF, and FOPL traffic lights. MPF, PF and UPF provided similar average contributions per 100 g to micronutrient recommendations. Per 100 kcal, MPF provided the greatest average contribution (14·4 % (interquartile range (IQR): 8·2–28·1)), followed by PF (7·7 % (IQR: 4·6–10·9) and then UPF (5·8 % (IQR: 3·1–9·7)). After adjusting for healthy/unhealthy items (presence of 1+ red FOPL), MPF had higher odds of an above-average micronutrient contribution per 100 kcal than UPF (OR: 5·9 (95 % CI 4·9–7·2)) and PF (OR: 3·2 (95 % CI 2·4–4·2)). MPF were more likely to provide greater contributions to micronutrient recommendations than PF or UPF per 100 kcal. These findings suggest that UPF or PF diets are less likely to meet micronutrient recommendations than an energy-matched MPF diet. The results are important for understanding how consumers perceive the healthiness of products based on FOPL.