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The paper seeks to fill the gap in the literature that on the one hand adopts productively a Foucauldian genealogical approach to analyze religious phenomena yet on the other hand offers only minimum details, or no account, of methodological criteria and analytical procedures. Drawing retrospectively on the methodological experiences and insights of the author's previous genealogical exercises, and the findings of some of the works above, the paper develops a contextual genealogical approach to study the religious in colonial and post-colonial settings with a Christian background. Based on a critical adoption of Nietzschean and Foucauldian tenets and six strategic analytical axes, the approach is presented as an open and flexible context-oriented methodological alternative for the necessarily constant rethinking of the religious in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cecil the Lion lived in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe and was a part of an Oxford conservation study until his death by poaching, outside of Park boundaries, at the hands of an American hunter, in July 2015. Cecil's death caused unique levels of international outrage, though wildlife poaching in general remains an all-too-ubiquitous phenomenon. This paper enquires as to why this particular death caused such outrage. I will examine this question through two Foucauldian lenses: first, through the Parks' discursive production of subjects – human and nonhuman animal; and secondly, by investigating Parks' practices of understanding biopower and pastoral power. I argue that though wildlife conservation in the National Parks is generally interested in conserving the species, not individuals, Cecil's status as a named individual in a scientific study resulted in the outrage and speaks to the paradox at the heart of Foucault's idea of pastoral power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the Christian discourse disseminated by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in the early Victorian period represents nonhuman animals as complicit in their own subjection. Using Foucault's notion of pastoral power--a power of care--we can recognize RSPCA discourse as constructing animal subjects who desire to remain subject to humankind. This essay demonstrates how three animal welfare tracts submitted to the RSPCA for a contest in 1837 rely on Christian discourse and construct animal subjects who willingly subject themselves to human needs and desires. These texts, one of which was the winner and published by the RSPCA, demonstrate that the construction of animal subjectivity within animal welfare discourse presents a striking form of power over animals that has not yet been noticed by other critics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the later seventeenth reception of Grotius De Veritate, contextualising the presentation of editions with the various theological attempts to identify and defend a 'reasonable' religion. In particular it focuses on the intellectual relationships between the projects for a 'non-mysterious' Christianity advanced by John Toland, and the more sincere ambitions of the most learned editor of Grotius in the eighteenth century, Jean Leclerc. The major themes context the theological arguments and reception to changing conceptions of the power and function of the established Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]