The Boston Globe reports on an exhibition of some wonderful artifacts from the distant past. Two 17th-century Indian belts shed light on the complex interrelationship of native faith and Catholicism. These wampum belts are on loan from the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Chartres and displayed at the fabulous Shelburne Museum. (My wife and I made a trip up to Vermont to the Shelburne a few years back. What a fantastic outdoor, interactive museum. I don't know where else one can see 17th-, 18th-, 19th-, and 20th- century homes, a shaker-style barn, a Methodist church from the 1840s, a lighthouse, a luxury train circa. 1890, a massive early-20th century steamboat all in one place?)
Two 17th century beaded wampum belts made by Native Americans in New England for French Jesuit missionaries as expressions of Catholic faith have been shipped from a cathedral in France to a museum in Vermont where they are now on display.Alexis Berthier, the spokeswoman for the Consulate General of France in Boston said the belts were given to the missionaries "as a sign of friendship" and that "they also signaled the conversion of some of these Native American people."
celebrates the shared history between the indigenous peoples of the region and French and English cultures. The exhibit features two masterpieces of Native American art and culture from the Treasury of Chartres Cathedral in France on view for the first time in the United States.
The two belts on view at Shelburne were made in the 17th century. The Huron belt was made in 1678 and the Abenaki belt was made in 1691 or earlier. Noting the conversion to Catholicism by some of the native peoples, the belts were given to the French Jesuit order. The belts were taken to France and placed in the Cathedral Treasury of Chartres in acknowledgment of their importance. The wampum belts are among the most important works from the cathedral treasury.
As a follow-up to Phil Sinitiere's posting last week about novels in history classrooms and related heresies, here's the beginning of a pre-press book review in Literature and Theologyfrom RIAH's real literature scholar, Everett Hamner. The book in question is Conversations with American Writers: The Doubt, the Faith, the In-Between,by Dale Brown, published last year by Eerdmans.
by Everett Hamner
ABOUT A decade ago, I walked into my local Family Christian Store®. This US chain’s website claims to represent ‘the largest brand in the Christian retailing market,’ and I was curious about its literary wares. After a half an hour in the fiction section—in which themes of apocalypse, sexual purity and political insularity figured heavily—I carried a book entitled something like The Satanic Origins of Harry Potter to the front desk. Upon politely inquiring as to criteria by which books were selected, I was told with equal politeness, ‘whatever sells’.
Herein lies the apparent dilemma for US novelists like many featured in Dale Brown’s most recent book of interviews, Conversations with American Writers—which might just as well be subtitled, The Inseparability of Faith and Doubt. In pursuing wide audiences for stories with theological elements, how does one reach both (i) the dominantly secular and liberal market catered to by most US booksellers and (ii) the dominantly religious and conservative market served by ‘Christian’ suppliers? Some might immediately reply that this is an impossible or even unworthy goal; an author may choose (i) or (ii), but not both. However, Brown’s book may be most valuable for the way it deconstructs the binary itself. Again and again, we hear from authors who cross such perceived boundaries without hesitation. If categories were necessary, most of Brown’s interviewees would be more easily filed as religious liberals or secular conservatives than as straightforward fundamentalists or atheists, and many of them are managing to straddle the ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ markets described above.
Taken as a whole, Brown’s book of conversations offers what could be a startlingly diverse collage of perspectives on US Christendom—particularly its more evangelical regions—and on lived experiences of the faith–doubt dynamic.
Continue the review here, including its engagement with such tantalizing subjects as epistemology, literary mysticism, Jan Karon, and David James Duncan (whose The Brothers K, despite its length, really should be added to the many comment-recommendations affixed to Phil's post).
We're pleased to present today Kathleen Cummings' analysis of recent moves by the Vatican to investigate Catholic women's orders in the United States. Kathleen's post had been featured at the home page of Notre Dame University, where it drew the attention of the Cardinal Newman Society, which described it as a "radical feminist commentary" which showed "disdain for Catholic male leaders." Oh my! My fellow former Lilly fellow and current director of the Cushwa Center for the Study of Amercan Catholicism (a well-known haven for terribly dangerous radicals who sponsor conferences such as "The Word of God and Latino Catholics") is tearing it up there in northern Indiana! Better keep her out of Texas!
The Vatican and American Catholic Sisters by Kathleen Sprows Cummings As Laurie Goodstein recently reported in the New York Times, the Vatican has ordered an “apostolic visitation” of American congregations of active religious women. Mother Mary Clare Millea, Superior-General of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus who was appointed to head the investigation, will prepare a confidential report to the Vatican on the state of each of about 340 qualified congregations of nuns in the United States.
As Goodstein and others have pointed out, the visitation has provoked anxiety among many nuns who fear they are the” target of a doctrinal inquisition.” Indeed, there is enough evidence to suggest that there is much more behind the Vatican’s apostolic visitation than a spirit of friendly and open-minded inquiry. Cardinal Franc Rodé, the prefect in Rome who ordered the investigation, observed last year that “all is not well with religious life in America” and more recently criticized nuns who “have opted for ways that take them outside communion with Christ in the Catholic Church.” Rodé’s statements, coupled with the Vatican’s warning to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious that sisters are not doing enough to promote church teaching on controversial issues, signal that punitive measures may indeed be on the way for women religious who are not living a “traditional” religious life—i.e., those who do not wear habits, do not live in convents, and do not engage in established ministries such as teaching or nursing. Though it is too soon to tell exactly what the outcome of the visitation will be, it is highly probable that part of it will include an affirmation of congregations who have retained the traditional hallmarks of religious life and a rebuke to those who have left them behind.
Should this happen, it will hardly surprise anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of women in Catholic history. The institutional church has never quite known what to do with women who step out of traditionally female roles, and there is no question that by becoming collectively more professional, more educated, and more likely to challenge those in positions of power in both church and state, the majority of sisters in this country have grown progressively less “feminine” over the past four decades. Though they are often accused of moving away from the Church, sisters who have chosen this version of religious life actually believe that it represents a more authentic one: In choosing to stand with those on the margins of society, and in witnessing to Christianity at its most radical, they understand themselves to be returning to the founding charisms of their congregations as mandated by the Second Vatican Council.
We can expect that the eventual report will make much of statistics that show that congregations whose members wear habits, live in convents, and engage in conventional ministries are presently attracting more members than their non-traditional counterparts. Many commentators have already recommended that American congregations revert to traditional practices as a remedy for their rapidly declining membership. Time, however, may well prove this presumption wrong. It is far too soon to tell if this trend will be sustained, or whether those who have entered over the past decade will stay permanently.
Historical perspective also demonstrates the flaws in this line of reasoning. Even the fastest-growing congregations today receive far fewer new members annually than most women’s religious communities did a century ago. There are two often-overlooked reasons why religious life proved so attractive to American Catholic women for most of this country’s history, and, conversely, why it represents a far less appealing option today. The first involves the perspective of sisters themselves. From the early 19th century until the late 1960s, religious life offered thousands of Catholic women—most of whom hailed from immigrant, working-class communities-- opportunities for education, leadership, and meaningful lives far beyond what they were offered in American society at large. But if U.S. Catholic women once saw more possibilities within church structures than outside of them, since the late 1960s quite the opposite has been true. Because transformations for women in American society have far outpaced those for women in the church, religious life no longer represents the only option for gifted and faithful Catholic women called to live their vocations in the modern world.
The second reason concerns the nature of the services American sisters provided. Throughout the golden age of vocations, church leaders very consciously advertised religious life to young Catholic women through sermons, pamphlets, and personal invitations. Let’s assume that in doing so they were primarily inspired by genuine concern for the spiritual well-being of their flock; until Vatican II, Catholics understood religious life as a higher and holier calling than life “in the world,” and entering a convent would therefore give a young girl a head start on the path to sanctification. But intermingled with more altruistic motives were other considerations. In encouraging more girls to become nuns, church leaders were also intentionally creating a vast underpaid work force to sustain and expand Catholic institutions, most especially parochial schools. American clergy and hierarchy are less successful in selling religious life today because most Catholic women today are less willing to dedicate their entire lives to subsidizing the church’s infrastructure. It is true that the precipitous decline of women religious—not to mention their median age--suggests that the numbers will never rebound to what they once were. But a smaller population of American sisters is hardly too high a price to pay for two very positive developments: the acknowledgement that religious women are far more valuable to the Church as witnesses than they are as workhorses, and the recognition that all Catholics are called to place their talents and energy in the service of a vibrant Catholic life in this country.
Mormon History Association 2010 Independence Missouri Conference Call for Papers The Home and the Homeland: Families in Diverse Mormon Traditions
The forty-fifth annual conference of the Mormon History Association will be held May 27-30, 2010, at the Kansas City Sports Complex Hotel in Kansas City, MO. It has been twenty-five years since the last MHA conference was held in Missouri. The 2010 theme, “The Home and the Homeland: Families in Diverse Mormon Traditions” recognizes the family as a central social and religious institution within Mormon traditions. Tanner Lecturer Catherine Brekus of the University of Chicago will address the topic of “Women in Early Mormonism.” Mormon traditions (also called Restoration traditions) have historically recognized the family and home as the spatial, social, and emotional place where men, women, and children become religious and moral people. Fatherhood and motherhood have been interpreted as religious, as well as biological and social roles. Papers and panels on all aspects of the history and practice of family life in all Restoration traditions are welcomed. Since Independence, Missouri, serves as the “homeland” to dozens of Restoration traditions, we especially encourage papers that examine or compare lesser studied groups. Of special note, 2010 marks the sesquicentennial of Joseph Smith III’s ordination as leader of the Community of Christ and the twenty-fifth anniversary of its first priesthood ordinations of women. Both events sparked controversy and caused the reexamination of how family roles shaped religious practices. Presenters could explore religious interpretation of the family, gender roles within the family, the Mormon religious experience within families, children and childhood, Mormon domestic architecture, or Mormon material culture.
MHA invites and actively seeks proposals for complete sessions, panels, and other presentations. While we encourage presentations related to the theme, we also welcome other proposals. While the Program Committee will give preference to complete two or three paper session proposals, individual paper proposals will be considered. Please send an abstract of the paper (no more than 300 words) that outlines your argument and the sources that will be used plus a short CV (no longer than two pages) for each speaker. Previously published papers will not be considered.
The deadline for proposals is October 1, 2009. Proposals should be sent by email to: mhameeting2010@gmail.com. Hard copies of proposals can also be sent to: Susanna Morrill, Lewis & Clark College, MSC 45, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Rd., Portland, OR 97219 or David Howlett, 222 E. Market St. Apt. 32, Iowa City, IA 52245. Notification for acceptance or rejection will be made by January 1, 2010. Additional instructions will be available on the MHA website at http://mhahome.org.
Yes, it's time again for the culture wars in Texas, this time over the teaching in K-12 history texts. The politically appointed board breaks down along familiar lines: scholars in the field of history (imagine that) sit on the committee alongside others who are . . . umm. . . well, less qualified, shall we say, in the field of history. Heck, Lynne Cheney looks like Leopold Von Ranke compared to these guys. Nonetheless, like Forrest Gump and influenza, these guys seem to turn up everywhere.
The three reviewers appointed by the moderate and liberal board members are all professors of history or education at Texas universities, including Mr. de la Teja, a former state historian. The reviewers appointed by conservatives include two who run conservative Christian organizations: David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, a group that promotes America's Christian heritage; and Rev. Marshall, who preaches that Watergate, the Vietnam War and Hurricane Katrina were God's judgments on the nation's sexual immorality.
Watergate!? That's weird. Whatever. Don't they remember the Lynrd Skynrd line about Watergate in "Sweet Home Alabama"? Other highlights from Marshall's career as a public policy analyst and commentator are here. Read it and then ask, "does your conscience bother you? Tell me true."
Anyway, Marshall and company are leading the charge to sanitize the texts of icky stuff they don't like. A lot of that icky stuff happens to involve non-white people; there's a shocker. Here's my favorite:
Delete César Chávez from a list of figures who modeled active participation in the democratic process.
Two reviewers objected to citing Mr. Chávez, who led a strike and boycott to improve working conditions for immigrant farmhands, as an example of citizenship for fifth-graders. "He's hardly the kind of role model that ought to be held up to our children as someone worthy of emulation," Rev. Marshall wrote.
Last time I checked, Mr Chavez was awfully religious, so you think Barton and Marshall would latch onto that. Is it because he's Catholic, or because he's a Latino? Or both?
Then there's Anne Hutchinson of colonial Massachusetts fame, airbrushed out of colonial history. Same goes for Thurgood Marshall -- gone! Shazam, Sgt. Carter!
If this was my home state of Oklahoma, no one would care -- too small-time. But this is Texas -- a market big enough to affect textbook writers everywhere (as has been the case previously with science standards).
Like star fullback Tim Riggins so eloquently intones in Friday Night Lights -- "Texas forever" . . . [tequila shot downed] . . . " No regrets." The Dillon Panthers got their Jumbotron (thanks to Buddy Garrity's greatest line ever, "Have you ever seen two people engaged on a Jumbotron?"), and Texans will get the textbooks they deserve. My guess is students will keep not reading them, regardless of who's in and who's out. On the other hand, standards matter, even if only symbolically, and besides, can't they find a cowboy or cowgirl or two to kick Marshall's butt once and for all -- is that too much to ask, Texas? All together now, on three: Clear minds -- full hearts -- can't lose.
UPDATE: A reader and recent visitor to Colorado Springs wrote and said the following: Focus on the Family pushes Barton's Drive Thru History America series, and I overheard an interesting conversation between a public school history teacher and his friend at Focus Welcome Centers. They were very enthusiastic about Drive Thru History America and talked about how he would be able to show it to his students in spite of it being a Christian product since it is not explicitly evangelizing. A little bit of sneaky preaching in the class room.
Recently I was (at last) completing Kip Kosek's Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy (Columbia University Press) -- about which more soon. Today's post is not about his book, though, but more about a tale of two seminaries.
In tracing the history of Christian radical pacifism (particularly individuals associated with the
Fellowship of Reconciliation), the importance of Union Theological Seminary in New York comes up time and again. In the conclusion, Kosek notes that "the waning of liberal Protestantism in the second half of the twentieth century, coincident with the eclipse of political liberalism, is one of the great puzzles of modern American history, but whatever its complex causes, that trend damaged Christian non-violence severely." While FOR leaders were consistent critics of liberal Protestantism, they nevertheless depended on the liberal Protestant tradition for the "institutional network of churches, seminaries, student groups, journals, and other forums that
supported the Fellowship's activities and occasionally produced truly radical religionists."
By the late 1960s, "that network was fraying," and so was Union, a symbol of the "dimunution of liberal Protestantism's intellectual and institutional resources, at the same time that conservative evangelicals wre organizing for a political resurgence . . . " Kosek's conclusion thus joins, and adds to, scholarly analyses of a great transformation in the American political (and religious) fabric in the late 1960s and 1970s. The largely urban warriors of Kosek's text were replaced by the (largely) suburban warriors of the new age of conservatism.
As it happened, while reading over these passages I received in the mail the new history of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (in Louisville) by the historian Gregory Wills: Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1859-2009 (Oxford, 2009). I read a proposal for this book several years ago, and since then have been looking forward to its publication.
Not just another commissioned institutional history, this is an outstanding work of scholarship by someone who knows the sources deeply and mines them extensively. Southern Seminary barely survived the Civil War and Reconstruction years, and again it struggled through the Depression and World War Two (just when Union was at its peak, with Reinhold Niebuhr leading the charge). By the late twentieth century, however, Southern had risen to become the largest Protestant theological institution in the United States. A painful struggle through the 1980s and 1990s resulted in a triumph for conservatives in the denomination, and for its current president R. Albert Mohler. The shifting of the American theological center of gravity from Niebuhr and his generation to Mohler and his marks the same kind of transformation (I think) that political historians such as Lisa McGirr, Donald Critchlow, and many others have tried to capture in their works.
A brief description from Oxford captures the main theme:
With 16.3 million members and 44,000 churches, the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Baptist group in the world, and the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. Unlike the so-called mainstream Protestant denominations, Southern Baptists have remained stubbornly conservative, refusing to adapt their beliefs and practices to modernity's individualist and populist values. Instead, they have held fast to traditional orthodoxy in such fundamental areas as biblical inspiration, creation, conversion, and miracles. Gregory Wills argues that Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has played a fundamental role in the persistence of conservatism, not entirely intentionally. Tracing the history of the seminary from the beginning to the present, Wills shows how its foundational commitment to preserving orthodoxy was implanted in denominational memory in ways that strengthened the denomination's conservatism and limited the seminary's ability to stray from it. In a set of circumstances in which the seminary played a central part, Southern Baptists' populist values bolstered traditional orthodoxy rather than diminishing it. In the end, says Wills, their populism privileged orthodoxy over individualism. The story of Southern Seminary is fundamental to understanding Southern Baptist controversy and identity.
Southern Baptist polity gave populism power, and this populism frequently resulted in the expulsion of those who were thought to deviate from evangelical orthodoxy. In recent years, this led to an almost complete turnover of the seminary's faculty as the seminary's identity was brought in line with the orthodoxy of the "conservative resurgence" in the Southern Baptist Convention.
In an interview about his book, Wills celebrates the struggle of orthodoxy against liberalism. He attributes the success of Southern to its periodic return to its roots, one that often involves some painful pruning but protects orthodoxy from decay. Southern Baptist expatriates and exiles from that period, obviously, view things differently, and the pain they experienced still can be felt (as in one personal reflection of a pre-1993 alumnus here). To his credit, Wills gives those voices full and fair coverage in his sections on what Southern Baptists used to refer to as "the controversy" (or did before "the controversy" was basically settled).
Because I admire Wills's scholarly research, but lament the outcomes that he celebrates, it makes me wonder what would be (or perhaps already is) the "institutional network" for our generation that would sustain the creative acts of conscience that Kosek traces in his book. The theologians and historians Gary Dorrien and Serene Jones, both of Union, as well as Cornel West reflect on that in this Bill Moyers interview. In particular, Dorrien has been instrumental in rescuing liberal theology from the caricatures to which it has been subjected. Perhaps the Union will rise again?
The pacifist radicals in Kosek's book were rather straight-laced, even conservative, in personal behavior, and their gender politics were pretty conventional. But they also certainly burst orthodoxies of both right and left, and ultimately served as a key transitional generation in bringing the "moral jujitsu" of active nonviolence resistance to the civil rights generation of the 1950s and 1960s. They weren't orthodox by anyone's standards. But really, what good is "orthodoxy," if it doesn't lead to justice?
For my American Religious History class this fall, I'm considering revamping the course by assigning 3 or 4 novels (and perhaps a memoir). As I've done in the past, Religion in American Life will serve as the main anchor text for the course, and I'll have a host of other primary and secondary readings for students to examine.
I once assigned a memoir, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (1963), and asked students to consider Baldwin's ideas about the relationship between race, religion and democratic society. Students enjoyed the book--partly because of its relative brevity--but mostly due to its deep and hefty subject matter and Baldwin's engaging and accessible writing. I will probably assign it again at some point.
Some have suggested using Black Robe (1985), and Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (1952). Malcolm X's Autobiography seems to be a mainstay. For me, the fact that each of these books have been made into a movie makes them compelling assignments--rich ground to discuss interpretive vantage points via text and film--but certainly there are many other worthy choices. I'd like to assign novels (or memoirs) that cover multiple time periods and address a variety of themes.
So, what are your experiences using novels (or memoirs) to teach American religious history? What novels (or memoirs) have worked best for specific periods? What novels (or memoirs) work best to address topics such as gender, immigration, race, ethnicity, class, unbelief, or sexuality? What novels (or memoirs) explore lived religion or popular religion, or even religious pluralism? What are the possibilities, promises, and peril of the novel (or memoir) approach?
A little while ago, I noted on the blog a newly published collection of beautifully real and worn photographs of baptismal scenes from the earlier twentieth century, along with an accompanying CD, Take Me To the Water. This book comes from the collector Jim Linderman, who blogs about his own work on this particular project here, and reflects more broadly on free lance collecting, folk art, ephemera, and curiosities at Dull Tool Dim Bulb.
The combination of photographs, capturing emotional experience in unselfconscious ways, and the CD soundtrack bring alive a world of religious ritual in ways that the writer Luc Sante briefly suggests in his preface to the book. Below is an interview I've conducted with Linderman, in which he talks about this work, his feeling for these baptismal photographs, and his philosophy of collecting and presenting his work.
1) First, Jim, you are a collector of everything from toy plows to homemade dolls to old recordings, and have been for quite a long time. I'm not a collector; I always want to get rid of/throw out stuff. So, explain the collecting impulse to me -- what drives you in that direction? And, where do you find room for all your stuff?
Editing is the secret. What I've assembled has always been manageable. Other than a few pieces of folk art furniture, virtually everything fits in a few shoe boxes. That's one beauty of photographs...for a small flat object, they pack a large visual punch. I lived for decades in a small, narrow, four room railroad apartment near Times Square and never had a problem squeezing things in. Andy Rooney, who I worked with while at CBS News long ago, once told me to take out an old book from the house every time he brought a new one in. That's the key...weeding and upgrading.
Collecting comes naturally to me. Not only do I enjoy looking for things which have been neglected or passed over, the hunt wakes me up in the morning. When I was healthy and young, a 500 mile drive for a flea market was nothing...now I use the web. Everyone should collect something, even if only interesting rocks. Everything looks better in groups of three or more.
2) Most people who are into collections of folk religious stuff fall in love with the documents and recordings of religion. But you are not driven by a religious impulse to collect this material, but something else. What is that? What fed your passion for old baptismal photographs and recordings?
I had originally conceived the project as a response to Jimmy Allen's book Without Sanctuary, which documents through antique photographs African-Americans being lynched. It was a controversial but most successful project of considerable historical value. Jimmy's book was a model for future photographic projects. He presented the photos, many which were crumpled and torn, as historical documents as much as images. There was no embellishment, cropping or cleaning up. More importatanly the pictures often had participants identifled by pen marks or notes on the reverse. Photographs have age and wear like any other object, and over time, important ones gain legitimacy through the aging process. As you might imagine, original images of people being murdered are not easy to find, but Mr. Allen was fearless and he managed to ferret them out. Many of the photographs were what are known as "real photo post cards" which are actually "limited editons" of a sort, printed by a cameraman in quantities of a dozen or a hundred, depending on what he perceived as a market...possibly one copy for each attendee. As frightening as the photos were, the faces of the participants scared Jimmy the most, they often smiled into the camera seemingly not even affected by the horrible event taking place behind them.
I had seen a photograph by W.P.A photographer Doris Ullman depicting a river baptism, thought it exceptionally beautiful and collected a few similar images when I could find them. When I saw Allen's book, I realized there was a need to assemble and preserve other events of a vernacular nature and that there might even be a market for them. At the least, the collection would be a contribution to our shared culture. I didn't initially recognize the collection as a spiritual antidote to Allen's collection, but the feel of the event, the spectacle and the participants had a similar feel with a more positive appeal. I was also on a sort of mission to convince photography collectors that condition matters far more than the "feel" of a photo...paper has texture, form and age...and I found photography folks were far too concerned with pristine condition. I like wear.
3) Your material has been put out by Dust to Digital, the remarkable Atlanta outfit best known probably for their collection Goodbye Babylon, for my money the greatest compilation of American religious music ever assembled. How did you hook up with them, and describe the experience of putting out a book along with a CD?
I've always prided myself at sorting through the commercial fluff and finding some authenticity. Early recordings, in particular blues, started interesting me as young as junior high...and while my older sister listened to Dylan, I was listening to the Harry Smith Anthology of American Music from my local public library. I pursue music vigorously, and had always held gospel in reserve as the last area to explore. Goodbye Babylon did it for me. I admired their work very much. Lance Ledbetter is a genius who has an amazing ability to actually produce solid, physical results from his passions. The design of Susan Archie was also incredible, and I not only recognized them as kindred souls, but had the notion of pushing them toward book publishing in addition to their sound recording projects. It certainly was a natural fit. I wrote them, sent some images and flew down with a huge file of photos. On my first visit, I left them in their hands.
4) The well-known writer Luc Sante has prepared a preface and short introduction to your book. How did he become involved, and describe what you think drew him to this particular work?
The project began long before Luc was involved. I had initially thought a prominent religious figure should do the introduction and essay and didn't anticipate having trouble finding one. One day I showed the collection of original photos to Brian Wallis, the bright and innovative director of the International Center of Photography in New York, and he immediately recognized their historical value. He put my donation of the originals to the collection into motion. Later, he happened to ask if I had seen "Luc's show" which was an exhibit of ephemera and photos he found interesting, and apparently it contained a few baptism scenes.
I was familiar with Sante's music essays and reporting, and had read his landmark book Low Life. I knew Luc was a wonderful writer, then learned he was a professor of photography at Bard College....AND that Lance Ledbetter at Dust to Digital had sold him previous releases, including Goodbye Babylon. The fit was kismet.
5) When people went to "wade in the water," what do you think they were experiencing? How do your photographs capture (or not capture) that? What about the participants standing on the banks, or on the bridge overpasses overlooking the water?
As I mention is the book, I have always felt performers and artists work harder when they are working for the Lord. Years ago, when I was meeting and encouraging folk artists and primitive painters, they would ask "what should I paint" and I always suggested something from the Bible. Everyone knows the stories and everyone immediately visualizes their favorite scene the minute you suggest it.
I grew up next to Lake Michigan. Living close to a body of water is in itself a deep, moving experience. Like a turtle you place on the ground, I always sense the direction of the nearest lake. Add a touch of spiritual cleansing and you've got a highly personal AND public event. All the senses are at work...the individual feels it physically and emotionally at the exact same time. They are nervous, anticipatory, shocked and relieved. The viewers senses are also working...they share the passion, they feel the sun, they hear the splash, the preacher's powerful words, the crying out, the shout. What I admire most about the production of Take Me To The Water is how Lance was able to PERFECTLY combine an aural melding of the events with the visual. It is uncanny and not only a testament to his skill, but I think never done as well with a physical book.
6) When I first blogged about this book, a skeptic in the comments section wrote the following: "Can someone help me out with the theology here? These are churches that don't believe in baptismal regeneration and that one "chooses" Jesus, making them far outside the mainstream of historic Christianity. If the baptism effectively "means" nothing, why is it so important that immersion be used? --Clueless Lutheran stuck in the Bible Belt" How would you answer that query?
One should look at the images. Can anyone look at the faces of those emerging from the water here and say it means nothing? I believe at the moment captured in each photo, it means EVERYTHING.
7) How would you suggest first-time viewers/listeners approach the CD of music included with the volume? I ask because I'm an fan of these recordings, but those who aren't coming with that kind of knowledge may find them strange, distant, and primitive (as do my students). What would you saw as part of a "listening guide" to your photographs?
Pictures strike one immediately. Eyes being our first line of defense, an image is immediate. Music takes a bit longer. One has to reach a certain level of familiarity to experience it...part of the reason music works is that on repeated listenings we can anticipate the sounds we heard before. Even I like the selections here the more I listen to them. I guarantee after a few listenings, "Sister Lucy Lee" will make all the sense in the world, and if the quiver in Washington Phillips voice as he describes the differences between denominations doesn't reach you... just give it another play. As for a guide, the track listings and notes Lance wrote are astounding. Many of these performers are today genuine cyphers...but he finds them. We truly did create a little world there. The music stands alone on many levels, the photographs stand alone on many levels...but together the become even greater.
8) Speaking on this blog specifically to those interested in American religious history, explain what you think is most important about your work, and how perhaps classroom teachers might be able to use your work.
As I hope to do a few lectures and presentations, I am actually trying to figure that out now!
Randall Stephens: What first interested you in the study of American religion?
Porterfield: In high school I was assigned to do a project on Zen Buddhism. I went to the Zen Buddhist temple in New York City, read D.T. Suzuki, and came back to my class and had everyone sit on top of their desks cross-legged while we chanted the chants that I had heard. It’s interesting to think back on this. There aren’t many religions you could do something like this with. You couldn’t celebrate the Eucharist with your class. I became fascinated not only by the ideas contained in the world’s various religions, but also by religion as a medium through which individuals and cultures express themselves. I think about religion as a way to learn about people.
Stephens: Are you particularly interested in the dramatic and theatrical elements of religion?
Porterfield: I am. Let me give you an example. I grew up in the Dutch Reformed Church, a denomination established by Dutch immigrants to New York in the 17th century. The most moving part of the service, which was in an imposing, really massive stone church, was when the ushers, distinguished men in dark broadcloth suits, marched up with the offering plates during the Doxology. This placing of the money on the altar was for me the heart of the church service. Yet it plays only an indirect role in Dutch Reformed theology. Maybe it was just a tradition in my particular church. But the way those gorgeous men in their beautiful suits marched up together with these brass plates holding people’s envelopes full of money—that will stay with me as long as I live.
Stephens: I’m intrigued by your discussion of neuroscience and religion in your book Healing in the History of Christianity. Neuroscientists like Andrew Newberg at the University of Pennsylvania and Michael A. Persinger at Laurentian University in Canada study religion from a neurobiological perspective. How has such recent work shaped religious studies and religious history?
Porterfield: I think this research has produced some very valuable insights. But if you go whole hog, say, into cognitive science, I think you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater. What neuroscience does tell us—and this is extremely helpful—is that the placebo effect really does work. This enables us to say that religious healing, whether it’s being done by a Native American shaman or a Catholic saint in 13th-century France, makes people feel better. We can take religious healing seriously. In other words, it’s not just a fiction.
Stephens: But wouldn’t someone who felt they’d been healed by religious power think that the placebo effect was a fiction?
Porterfield: It depends on the individual, of course. But I asked a psychologist this question once, and his response was that the biological openness to hope is so great that it can’t be overridden by skepticism, or at least can’t always be overridden by skepticism. And at some level that makes sense to me. We can perform rituals of hope without believing in them absolutely, and still derive hope from them. Robert Orsi is particularly good on this point. >>>
Count on Phil Sinitiere, aka Baldblogger, to come up with the web's most extensive coverage of the author, Curtis Evans. Catch his two-part interview with Evans here, starting with Part II, scroll down for Part I. A little excerpt:
What began as an initial and hesitant probing of this literature led me to dig deeper into the specific sources that they cited to try to get a handle on the popular or cultural images of black religion that troubled them. What resulted was continued reading, trying to trace back in time how African American religion was understood and conceptualized. Eventually, it was not clear to me where to stop. How does one locate an origin of a particular discourse? David [Hall] and I talked a bit about this problem of finding origins. [Daniel Walker] Howe and George Frederickson in different ways wrote about romantic racialists and liberal New England Protestants who emphasized a religion of feeling and emotion and I found that many of these people had much to say about slave religion and seemed to particularly map feelings, affection, and a “religion of the heart” on slave Christianity. When I began talking to my advisors, I sensed I had a massive project on my hand, but our talks convinced me (though some of them were a bit worried about the size of the project) that I would have to engage in an analysis of the evolution of historical ideas, theories and cultural images of black religion if I were to make sense of the long-term historical trajectory of the kinds of issues that black sociologists and other social scientists were addressing in the 1930s and 1940s. In this way, my area of special interest became this complex intertwining of race and religion in American history.
A few days ago, I posted a set of reflections on Jason Bivins, Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism. Jason left some comments on that post and has consented to have them reprinted here as a guest post. Jason is presently working on a book about jazz and religion, and promises a post on that subject here at the blog sometime later this summer. The tentative title: Spirits Rejoice! Jazz and American Religion. As a onetime devotee of the Church of John Coltrane, I await that work eagerly. REad more about that and Jason's other thoughts on Religion of Fear and other subjects in his interview here. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Writing Religion of Fear by Jason Bivins
It was a strange journey to conceive and then labor over this book during the madhouse years. And as I write in the conclusion, my sense of this political religion’s power (and of its unsavory implications) was equaled only by my frustration over the relatively apolitical character of American religious studies. Or at least over its blandly political character: strolls down tired old paths in new shoes, or chewing the cud at a safe (but always “inoffensive”) remove (maybe Delillo would call this Bovine Studies, Paul!).
But what really drove me was not just my desire to offer a fresh approach to studies of religious conservatism, to chronicle a different kind of doom (the secular version perhaps, where conspiracy, apathy, solipsism, and intolerance spawn a virally circulating cultural resignation), or to document some important subcultural strains of American evangelicalism. What really drove me was the hope that everything I write about in the book would disappear. Not religion or conservatism (anyone who takes that from the book, well, I worry about their reading skills), but unreason, stentorian shrillness, and splenetic visions of holy gore. This isn’t to say that I expected my book would facilitate this fading (though I confess that I nurtured dreams of “crossover” sales), for that would be too much to hope for. Nor is it to say that I bought too heavily into campaign year ebullience. I simply hoped.
Of course I knew that ROF wasn’t going anywhere. It never has. It only adapts and mutates. The sense that hostile others are responsible for our ills is too potent, too fluid an explanation, and too efficient a means for evading the ambiguous responsibilities of democratic citizenship. Just consider Glenn Beck's recent "appropriation" of Thomas Paine. There is, of course, more than this going on in my story and in others like it. But the very tensional relationships, the flourishing agon, the open-endedness of deliberation on which democracies rest, these are the stakes with this incarnation of the religion of fear (which, in light of Todd’s comparative questions, might mark a difference from other instances).
Alas, we are still mired in this stuff. But at the end of the day, I have enough faith in the field, in its possibilities, in its gifts, to think the project was worth seeing through. And, despite sometimes seemingly overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I have confidence in my fellow citizens. That might sound bizarre, and I don’t mean to suggest that what’s wrong is simply the disproportionate influence of a warped few; rather, like all of us, I know that the arts of conversation and respect can be realized far more easily than we might think. To pin our hopes on governmental or administrative change is too much and too remote. But as political theorists like Romand Coles write so cogently, it’s possible to think and perceive and practice differently on a much smaller scale, to sustain those values we think are worth sustaining, and to seek out ways of realizing them with other humans.
So despite my pessimism (you should have seen the first version of the ending!), and despite the enduring power of these frights, perhaps it’s possible simply to turn away from the ROF and start cultivating (or reviving) other sensibilities. I look forward to those moments when the field stops wringing its hands at the sidelines quite so much.
FOR JULY FOURTH THE TEXT OF THE VIRGINIA STATUTE FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM (1786)
An Act for establishing religious Freedom.
Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being Lord, both of body and mind yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the Ministry those temporary rewards, which, proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry, that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right, that it tends only to corrupt the principles of that very Religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed, these are criminal who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty because he being of course judge of that tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only as they shall square with or differ from his own; that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order; and finally, that Truth is great, and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them: Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities. And though we well know that this Assembly elected by the people for the ordinary purposes of Legislation only, have no power to restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies constituted with powers equal to our own, and that therefore to declare this act irrevocable would be of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and do declare that the rights hereby asserted, are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.
On Teaching American Religious Pluralism to Foreigners by Kevin M. Schultz, University of Illinois, Chicago
I just had the joy of teaching about America's religious pluralism to 30 high school teachers from around the world.
My school, the University of Illinois at Chicago, participates in a State Department exchange that brings to Chicago 30 American history teachers from around the world. They're here for six weeks, including two weeks of travel time, to learn about all-things-American. There were two teachers from Japan, two from Norway, and two from Scotland. Other than that, there was one representative from places all over the world--Belgium, South Africa, Nairobi, Turkmenistan, the Czech Republic, Italy, Columbia, the Philippines, Israel, and much more. I got to lecture on American religion and religious pluralism. We read about the culture wars and Bellah's "Civil Religion in America." I lectured on American religious history from the Puritans to today. A full three hours, to say the least.
The first thing I learned was how unique our system of religious freedom is.
The separation of church and state, with the state still being relatively friendly to religion, is one-of-a-kind. And, besides a few of the Muslims in the crowd, most of the others envied our system, although they remained baffled by how we Americans could be such a nation of believers but never have to learn about religion or religions in public schools. They had me there--parents do carry this burden, or pass it on to the institution of their choice--but that was the deal we've brokered here in the United States. The Palestinian guy wasn't buying it, saying in his nation-less land, the schools taught the "two religions around them, Islam and Christianity." He didn't flinch when I asked if they taught Judaism too. Of course they didn't.
The second thing I did was hypothesize that our history of recognizing religious pluralism has four stages, each resembling the swing of a pendulum: (1) the Puritan "city on the hill" which declined as soon as it was established into the Founders notion of religious freedom as enshrined in the Constitution (no religious tests) and the First Amendment; then (2) a swing back toward creating a culturally unified Protestant nation beginning with the Second Great Awakening and carrying on until the first decades of the 20th century (see Ed Blum's Reforging the White Republic); then (3) the decline of this Protestant hegemony (and another swing of the pendulum) from, say, the 1920s to the 1970s, with the 1962 and 1963 Supreme Court cases bringing the point of pluralism home (with Catholics and Jews in the vanguard); and (4) pluralism challenged, with the rise of the Religious Right and the Moral Majority trying to push the pendulum back.
I'm not sure how far the pendulum will swing back this time around, but I do think it's interesting, and vitally important, that each time the pendulum swung to the "honoring pluralism" side, a batch of laws were passed or upheld, first in the form of the Constitution and the First Amendment, and second in the Supreme Court cases of the early 1960s that declared that "favoritism cannot be tolerated."
Perhaps the enshrinement of these ideas allowed the pendulum to go back again toward Protestant Christianity, with Americans secure in the knowledge that the religious freedom that Americans are unique in possessing will remain intact. After all, even in phase four, the Moral Majority includes among its ranks conservative Jews and conservative Catholics. Pluralism wins?
Just a thought. Or just another over-simplification.
No, this isn't a post about Eisenhower's foreign policy, but about our stylistic changes here at RIAH! Randall Stephens, who has now officially been promoted to full BlogMeister status, has put together a new template for us, the partial results of which you see here. We're still working on it, and those of you who are using INternet Explorer as your web browser [hint -- use Firefox or Google Chrome, your life will improve immediately] may not see the blogroll and such in the right-hand column. For some mysterious reason, IE will not show that, and we're trying to fix that. The blog image at top should be changing each time you log in, as soon as we can get the Java script thingie to accomplish that.
Anyway, thanks to Randall and congratulations on his promotion to BlogMeister. Onward, Billy Pilgrim.
In an op-ed piece from the New York Times in mid-June, Paul Krugman commented on the spate of domestic terror: the murder of George Tiller, a doctor who performed abortions, and the the murder of a security guard at the National Holocaust Museum. Krugman noted that the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning about the dramatic increase of ring-wing extremism, which the upsurge of these movements in the 1990s, the era of the Oklahoma City bombing. Krugman continues that there is an important difference between the 1990s and today, the role of the media in disseminating hate. Krugman writes: Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. haven’t directly incited violence, despite Bill O’Reilly’s declarations that “some” called Dr. Tiller “Tiller the Baby Killer,” that he had “blood on his hands,” and that he was a “guy operating a death mill.” But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House.
Whether the media is to blame or not, there is something about the outright intolerance of this rhetoric that needs to be examined. What I am more interested in is the lack of commentary on religion in these movements. Yes, the shooter at the Holocaust Museum was a white supremacist, but he was also involved in highly conspiratorial and religious worldview. And some have even compared his actions to that of a suicide bomber. Tiller was murdered while serving as church usher, but his murder was justified as a murder of a murderer, a just killing to save the lives of innocents, by radical anti-abortion activists. Religion lurks in this realm of domestic terror, but observers are often hesitant to note the place of particular forms of Christianity in motivating gruesome actions. In his article, "Onward Christian Terrorists," Mark Juergensmeyer notes that these two events represent the upswing in Christian terrorism that mimics the hotbed of such thinking and doing in the 1990s. He writes: If, as it seems, Scott Roeder was indeed the culprit behind the ghastly killing of Dr. George Tiller last week in a Wichita church, the attack raises the possibility of the beginning of a new wave of Christian terrorism in the Obama era. Ruby Ridge and other incidents in the 1990s culminated with the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing, an event so horrendous that it seems to have sobered the radicalism of many Christian militia members. Then came the eight-year reign of President George W. Bush who voiced his support for anti-abortion activists and gave the impression that they had a friend in the White House. The violence abated.
All this may now be changing. A new president is vilified in the right-wing press not only as pro-abortion but as a demonic figure. The image is one of desperation: that the moral authority of the country has been taken captive by an evil enemy. This has the effect of giving moral license to an image of cosmic war, goading the violent urges of some of the most extreme of the Christian activists, whose world view is a melange of millenarianism and anti-abortion adventurism.
This sort of violence might become more commonplace with the current political regime change. For these extreme religious activists, the moral order is decaying, which requires action to right the world again. For someone like me who analyzes the worlds of white supremacists, these events are neither shocking nor surprising. The violent rhetoric of these groups can easily lead to equally violent actions.
What is surprising to me is how shocked the general public can be that these groups have religious, especially Christian, foundations. In the spring term, my presentation of white supremacy and Christianity to my Religious Intolerance class was met with confusion and occasional disdain. Movements like Christian Identity and the Army of God unnerved them. Christianity, for many of them, was a movement of social justice, love or familiarity. Other religious movements might produce terrorists but not the religion of their families, homes and communities. Moreover, domestic terror seemed too far-gone and forgotten. Few remembered the tragedy of Ruby Ridge or the Oklahoma City bombing. When they did remember, these events became one time events created by deranged, unaffiliated people. The ties to Christian patriot movements or larger extreme Christian worldviews were forgotten or never known in the first place. Some could not fathom the relationships to Christianity. And in all honesty, this is one of the few lectures where my guilt lingers. My students, by large, did not realize that these groups existed in our proverbial backyards. A few students left my lecture with fear about what these groups might do and what our government was doing to track homegrown, white terrorists. Then, the death of Tiller and the shooting at the Holocaust Museum affirmed their fears and my own.
Hopefully, my students have more nuanced views of concepts like religion, terror and intolerance, and they can realize that just because a religion is familiar doesn’t mean that it can’t also be strange from time to time. Overall, I hope more scholars take up the banner of Michael Barkun, whose excellent work on Christian Identity and conspiracy and religion has directed us to the importance of conspiratorial religious worldviews. His insistence that no matter how strange or fantastic that these worldviews still need study is increasingly important with these groups on the rise. Religion is a part of white supremacy and domestic terror; perhaps, we just have to be more willing to look for it.
Sunday Night Odds and Ends
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A few things on the web that caught my eye this week.
Why Sunday Schools are closing.
Stan Katz: Getting history right.
Obama's dinner with American histo...
Does America Have a Creedal Soul?
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Robert Locke says no.
I disagree. But he makes an interesting argument worth listening to. Most
but not all of us at American Creation understand John Lock...
Sunday round-up: Rodeo Days edition
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Who can resist “The Grandaddy of ‘Em All?” It’s high rodeo season out here
on the high plains desert–check out this bareback rider, courtesy of the
Denver ...
Book review round-up
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Greg Grandin, NYU, discusses William Appleman Williams in The Nation. Williams' The Tragedy of American Diplomacy has been released in a 50th anniversary edi...
RALPH E. LUKER: Early Modern Notes
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David M. Kennedy, "What Is History Good For?" *NYT*, 16 July, reviews
Margaret MacMillan's *Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History*.
[image: Car...
A Taste of the Old (New?) World
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Emails from my ex-boyfriend rarely include any of his own words. Instead, he
forwards messages that originate from another friend of ours without so much
a...
A Woman in Berlin
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From NPR:
"Silence Broken On Red Army Rapes In Germany"
by Eric Westervelt
This week, the American premiere of the German film *A Woman in Berlin* brings
...
For Chris: Two Anti-Anti-Mormon Miscegenation refs
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In a post earlier today, Chris asked about instances when Mormons defended
polygamy by attacking sexual relations between races. I have been working on
rac...
Other People’s Money
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Some interesting fallout from the light sentence given to Pennsylvania state
senator Vincent Fumo for his conviction on corruption charges, a sentence
that...
Edward Porter Alexander Comes Through Again
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I‘ve said more than once that I find Civil War memoirs to be very difficult
to use when trying to understand the war itself. Many are self serving and
are...
faith and Catholicism. These wampum belts are on loan from the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Chartres and displayed at the fabulous Shelburne Museum. (My wife and I made a trip up to Vermont to the Shelburne a few years back. What a fantastic outdoor, interactive museum. I don't know where else one can see 17th-, 18th-, 19th-, and 20th- century homes, a shaker-style barn, a Methodist church from the 1840s, a lighthouse, a luxury train circa. 1890, a massive early-20th century steamboat all in one place?)
Cheney looks like 
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