ABSTRACT In the last fifteen to twenty years, there has been a significant increase in scholarship on aesthetics in Christian ethics. Call this “the aesthetic turn.” Much of the literature in this area claims (or relies on the claims) that (1) engaging with beauty/art positively affects moral judgments, attitudes, and behaviors; (2) these effects are greater than the effects of engaging with arguments on moral judgments, attitudes, and behaviors; and (3) these effects are stable over time. Whereas the first claim enjoys robust empirical psychological support, the second and third do not. For this reason, Christian ethicists should incorporate empirical inquiry into the second and third questions into their research agenda.
This article examines the formation of early Muslim identity through the theoretical framework of "religious pragmatism." It mediates between Donner's "Believers" thesis and more confessionally committed readings by showing the sociological mechanism by which the movement transitioned from the former to the latter. Drawing on the Qur'an, epigraphy, and analysis of Hadith as social memory, I argue that the Prophet navigated a "liminal" phase of community formation by operating in dual roles: as a dogmatic preacher of monotheism and a pragmatic arbitrator (hakam) of social disputes. These dual roles sustained a period of "adhesion" in Arthur D. Nock's sense, during which communal boundaries remained porous and legal pluralism could persist. This pragmatism, however, had a deliberate terminus. I argue that the change of the qibla from Jerusalem to Mecca was the mechanism of rupture as it ended the adhesion phase, converted the Prophet's call from adhesive to exclusive, and crystallized an independent Muslim identity.
