No abstract

The origin of the Society's Stressed Skin Data Sheets was certainly my own paper, R and M No. 1553; it embarrasses me not at all to put it so. In 1930 the Structures Sub-committee of the ARC asked for a summary of the present state of knowledge regarding sheet metal construction, and the chairman, (Sir) William Farren, directed me as secretary to prepare a draft. I did so—the draft was discussed by the Sub-committee, revised and amended and finally in 1933 published over my name. To me the paper was a chore, albeit a welcome one, and all I myself really got out of it in the end was the realisation that I could do with a little more Anglo-Saxon: “What we know about …” would now be my title.

No abstract

Jazz and pentecostalism are contemporaries, arising out of the same ethnic-racial mixture, the same slums of vast American cities. Here the author analyses the conditions of their emergence and their meeting, their common characteristics, factors contributing to their times of force and weakness. He describes how these two children long misunderstood, even abused, by the American experience have succeeded as far as to "become highways along which the whole world is moving".

We have moved beyond a "market economy" to what some have called a "market society," one in which everything seems to be for sale. We also now see the advent of a "market religion," in which the values and life meanings of consumer culture have become dominant. This new religion has its own doctrines, rituals, priesthood, and mission to "go into all the world." It has its own narratives of creation, fall, and redemption, and its own saints and heroes. But because its underlying thrust is endless growth, and we live on a finite planet, it is carrying us toward destruction. Some parts of Christianity are opposing what Pope Francis has called "idolatry," but unfortunately most parts are being swept into its new dispensation.