tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post7067704837116588989..comments2024-03-26T11:33:59.219-06:00Comments on Religion in American History: The Black Church in the New Republic, the New York Times, and NPRPaul Harveyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13881964303772343114noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-22542893514260842912010-05-04T05:55:42.081-06:002010-05-04T05:55:42.081-06:00Enjoyed the Butler interview. Also appreciated the...Enjoyed the Butler interview. Also appreciated the albeit brief discussion of variety within the sphere of black religions. I'm not sure this has been discussed enough in the debate, but I haven't been reading along all that closely...<br /><br /><em>MARTIN: ...you've also said that the black church may be dead in its incarnation as an agent of change. But you also say as the imagined home of all things black and Christian, it is alive and well. What does that mean? </em><br /><br /><em>Prof. BUTLER: What I mean by that is this: I mean, everyone had this idea about what the black church was, especially in civil rights movement. And if you think back historically to Du Bois and others who gave us the structure of the words the black church, right, what has happened now is that with Eddie's article, what it means is that people have imagined this to be this powerful social force, when it's always been very complicated. </em><br /><br /><em>And so now the show, as I'd like to call it, is in part about performance, but on the other side of it, I really do think that the ways in which we saw, in the 2008 election, how the black church got reconfigured in certain ways because of the election of Obama and the kinds of election politics that were played, and even if you go back to 2004, the coalition of what everybody thinks the black church is has broken apart. </em><br /><br /><em>MARTIN: Well, it sounds, in a way, though, that you agree with him. I mean, you say that the black church as a vehicle for social change really is no more. </em><br /><br /><em>Prof. BUTLER: I think there are individual churches that are agents of social change. As a collective whole, that has always been problematic. But, see, the other part of this - which I think did not come out in Professor Glaude's statement - is that you have people sitting in those pews. And the people in the pews really don't want the intellectual conversation about this. They are still very much invested in that church being an agent of change in their community. Now, it may be an agent of change on the micro level, but on the macro level, this larger level, that remains to be seen.</em>Art Remillardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03857242536492717015noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-64625933498313678122010-05-03T22:19:41.902-06:002010-05-03T22:19:41.902-06:00Butler's comment is interesting in light of La...Butler's comment is interesting in light of Laurie Maffly-Kipp's new Setting Down the Sacred Past, which I'm currently halfway through. She argues, among other things, that the failure to understand the diversity of the black confessional experience (and the salience of those confessional arguments and divisions) reifies the construct of a unified and monolithic "black church."John G. Turnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08461094355047650502noreply@blogger.com