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This article seeks to integrate the "Indian swami" with the "global guru" and reflects upon why Vivekananda's teaching was conveyed so differently to different audiences. It argues that Vivekananda's distinctive form of "counter-preaching" had its roots in Adhikari-bheda, a tradition that seeks to tailor spiritual instruction to the needs and capacities of individual aspirants. I will show how he applied this technique to larger audiences because he believed that "truth" had a relative dimension that had to account for cultural difference. I investigate how instruction in Hindu "man-making" and spiritual democracy in India was matched by lessons designed to counter "muscular Christianity" in Euro-America. Vivekananda wanted both to reinforce a vision of eastern wisdom and counter western (and at times Indian) prejudices, whilst also attempting to shift entrenched but fallacious generalizations in each arena. In working within this seeming contradiction, I will show how his nationalism and universalism were inextricable, and also tied to his innovative formulations of Advaita Vedanta, karma yoga, and especially "practical Vedanta". I will conclude by explaining how his methods generally sought to pull his audiences away from extremes. The kaleidoscopic qualities of his teachings, I will suggest, explain why his legacy has been so variously deployed by both the right and left in contemporary Indian political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars today regard Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen as a supporting player in the American efforts to drum up support for the Cold War; however, this view limits Sheen's influence to the years he spent on television hosting his program, Life Is Worth Living (1952–1957). Yet, by the time Sheen left his program, he had been part of public discussions of religion and American politics for almost thirty years. Before his 1930 debut as an authoritative Catholic voice in America, Sheen had become a decorated Catholic scholar, both in his home country and in Europe, earning him a papal audience and broad support in the American Catholic hierarchy. His early contributions to public discussion were sophisticated adaptations of Leonine Catholic social teaching to American circumstances. Critical to his teachings was his view of the American people as the source for political legitimacy. In this respect, he defied the more reactionary clergy of Europe; however, Sheen's views were vital to his efforts to distinguish why America had a just war against the totalitarian governments of the Axis powers but also a duty to spare people who were as likely to be victims of the regime as they were supporters. Sheen carried this distinction into the Cold War, in which he called for Americans to support the Russian people by opposing totalitarian government there. Therefore, Sheen never advocated the "us vs. them" nationalism so common among Cold War propaganda, which is consistent with his initial opposition to the Vietnam War and his only partial reconsideration of that opposition later. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]