tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post5249617360807582164..comments2024-03-26T11:33:59.219-06:00Comments on Religion in American History: African American Religion as a category Paul Harveyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13881964303772343114noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-85578803421367019072015-10-15T00:54:30.143-06:002015-10-15T00:54:30.143-06:00Nice post..I had been looking for a source to know...Nice post..I had been looking for a source to know about <a href="http://rememberinghistory.com/articles/" rel="nofollow">African American history</a>... Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12442233777645464961noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-53949092433965363722015-09-05T19:17:46.247-06:002015-09-05T19:17:46.247-06:00Rather, it is a conceptual tool we can use in our ...<i>Rather, it is a conceptual tool we can use in our aim to better understand human experience, particularly when it comes to the reality of racism and white supremacy in the United States - its violence and the creativity born of the struggle against it.</i><br /><br />Although it's a significant component, to view American Catholicism primarily--or even largely--in terms of America's proud history of Protestantism/anti-Catholicism would diminish it, describing it not in terms of what it is but in terms of what it was a reaction to. It surrenders the narrative to the bad guys.<br /><br />And if we reduce any and all "religion" to a one-size-fits-all consolation in the face of social oppression and universalize it <i>too much</i>, do the details even matter? One religion's as good as the next. But this surely won't do. The Irish didn't see America as a new Babylonian captivity, but African Americans sure did. The theological details are important, if only aesthetically.<br /><br />As for "THIS IS WHAT THEOLOGY LOOKS LIKE!" and President Obama's benediction in Charleston, the historical significance or even the truth of such rhetoric is difficult to assess in the present. Indeed, it's quite rhetorically dangerous to even question it. <br />________________________________________<br /><br /><i>American Religions, 1500-2000: Colonialism, Democracy, and Freedom (Cambridge, 2015) just dropped; Show Me A Hero has me thinking a lot about white Catholic resistance to forced desegregation</i><br /><br />This painfully points up the difference between sociology and religion.<br /><br />Racist white Catholics ≠ Catholicism, just as racist Christians [of any race] ≠ Christianity. The Catholic Church itself excommunicated segregationists. As Frederick Douglass said of Lincoln, too slow and too little, but surely we must study our better angels and not our worst. Sociology will always yield up the latter. We must study the rare instances of courage, not the numbing sameness of the mobs.<br /><br />Matthew, thx for a provocative post as always.<br /><br /><i>"We are still convinced that enforced racial discrimination inflicts incalculable mental and emotional cruelty and pain, physical and social privations, educational and economic restrictions upon 16 millions of our fellow citizens, and that these discriminations are unjustifiable violations of the Christian way of life and the principles of our American heritage" (Rummel, "Blessed" 1). <br /><br />These words of Most Reverend Joseph Francis Rummel, the Archbishop of New Orleans from 1935 through 1963, reflect the beliefs which guided him in directing the racial integration of all Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. An historical analysis of Rummel's role in the civil rights struggle shall be made through the presentation of the background of Catholic school segregation in New Orleans, a brief biography of the man, and the events between 1953 and 1963 which led to the actual racial integration of the Catholic schools.</i><br /><br />http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1993-4/Smestad.htmlTom Van Dykehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07121072404143877596noreply@blogger.com