New Year, New You, New Books … Already?

by Edward J. Blum

We’ve only just begun the fall semester, but it won’t be long until book orders are due for the spring. So, as you’re putting in orders for old faithfuls like The Kingdom of Matthias (IBSN: 0195098358) or new loves like Freedom’s Coming (ISBN: 0807858145), you may want to consider the third editions of Major Problems in American History (ISBN: 0495915130). If you’re not familiar with my blog posts, then you need to know that most of them are self-promotional. If you are not familiar with this series, the Major Problems, then you should really get your hands on them. The collections match 8-10 primary documents from a given period or topic with 2-3 scholarly essays that debate the key points. I have used just about every one and students seem to love them. It’s high-quality one-stop shopping (more like Target than Walmart) for primary and secondary sources!

Sadly, the new edition for Major Problems in American History began with a loss. Just before revisions started, editor Jon Gjerde passed away, professor of history at UC Berkeley and author of some amazing books on the West, ethnicity, and rural life,. I joined my colleague Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman (author of the fantastic book on the Peace Corps, All You Need is Love) to edit the new editions. Professor Gjerde did an incredible job establishing the main contours for the first volume and it’s his strong architecture I built upon.

The two new volumes highlight the role of religion and culture in significant, entertaining, and critical ways. Volume 1 (through Reconstruction) now has poems from Anne Bradstreet and court testimony from Tituba; it follows the emergence of American civil religion with patriot songs from the Revolution and odes to Washington; it careens into the antebellum period with new doctrines from the Church the Church of Latter-day Saints and salacious exposés on the Kingdom of Matthias. It has prophetic visions from Native Americans, new biblical interpretations from feminists locating egalitarianism in the Bible, and heavenly images of emancipation. For secondary documents, Volume I now has snippets from David Hall’s Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment on the colonial era and Nell Painter’s Sojourner Truth on antebellum religion and reform, where Truth’s adventures are matched with the analysis of Finneyite revivalism in Paul Johnson’s Shopkeepers’ Millennium.

Volume II amped up its religious coverage as well. Lost Cause ministers lionize the South, Brigham Young battles anti-Mormon ballads, Mark Twain satirizes the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Sister Aimee Semple McPherson uses new technology to defend the old-time religion, Father Coughlin denounces FDR, Vance Packard laments the religion of America in the Cold War, and Jerry Fallwell calls for the nation to return to the Bible.

Finishing the Columbia Guide to Religion in American History (I'll Drink to That!)

Paul Harvey

While some of you reprobates were out testing the new micro-beer selections on the 4th of July, some of us were putting our long personal nightmare (a book manuscript) finally to post and ready to be shipped out for its deployment -- at long last! (I tested out a new bottle of Old Raj gin, the best bottle of alcohol God ever invented, at the end of all this, so I'll have to join the reprobate category).

Our contributor John Fea was finishing up his book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation: A Historical Introduction; and yes, John, finishing is a good feeling. Click on the link for a preview of the book and table of contents. Sounds like the publisher is going to get it out pretty promptly -- Feb. 2011.

On the home front, Randall, Ed Blum, and myself have been working on The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History for the last few years, and some of that has been, in the words of gospel great Thomas Dorsey, through the storm and through the night. I thought we'd be done with this a couple of years ago, but, you know, stuff happens. Anyway, the weekend was spent finishing up most of the last few details on the ms and ready to ship out pretty soon. Here's a preview below -- don't start camping out at the bookstore just yet, as it will be a good while before it gets from final manuscript to actual book, but several of our blog contributors are involved in this project, and others of you have asked me about it from time to time, so here's what it's going to look like once the priceless gem is in your hands (or, more likely, on the library reference shelf, as these Columbia Guide books can get a little expensive!).

As you can see, we've got a nice list of contributors who have written excellent essays on time periods, movements, traditions, and themes in American religious history. The volume also has an extensive A - Z glossary of American religious history and a bibliography which includes books, articles, CDs, DVDs, films, and online resources.

Like I said the last time I did an edited book -- not going to do that again!

Here's a preview for you.

Columbia Guide to Religion in American History
Edited by Paul Harvey and Edward J. Blum
Bibliographic Editor Randall Stephens

Table of Contents

Preface 1-8
Paul Harvey and Edward J. Blum

Introduction 9 - 80
Paul Harvey and Edward J. Blum

Colonial Encounters r 81 - 107
Linford Fisher

Native American Religions 108 - 135
Suzanne Crawford

Civil Religion and National Identity 136 - 156
Andrew Manis

Theology 157 - 179
Mark Noll

Evangelicals in American History 180- 198
Douglas Sweeney

Religion and Politics 199 - 222
Jason Bivins

Religion and the Law 223 - 24
Frank Ravitch

Religion, War, and Peace 245 - 271
Ira Chernus

Religion, Gender, and Sexuality 272 - 297
Anthony Michael Petro

Religion, Race, and African American Life 298 - 328
Edward J. Blum

Religion, Ethnicity, and the Immigrant Experience 329-350
Roberto Trevino

Asian American Religion 351 - 365
Timothy Tseng

Alternative Religious Movements 366 - 385
Stephen Stein

Religion and the Environment 386 – 403
Lynn Ross-Bryant

Religion and Popular Culture 404 – 417
Philip Goff

Conservatism and Fundamentalism 418 - 433
Margaret Bendroth

Catholicism in America 434 - 454
Leslie Woodcock Tentler

American Judaism 455 - 472
Alan Levenson

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints 473-489
D. Michael Quinn

Islam in America 490 - 509
Jane Smith

A-Z Glossary 510 - 572

Major Surveys, Textbooks, and Reference Guides 573 - 576

Bibliographies by Chapter Titles 577 - 634

Filmography 635 - 641

Discography 642 - 649

Electronic Resources 650 - 658

Religious Intolerance in America -- New Documentary History

Paul Harvey

This just in, from a flyer I received from University of North Carolina Press: John Corrigan and Lynn Neal, eds., Religious Intolerance in America: A Documentary History. Out in May in both hard and paper, and at 304 pp. very classroom usable.

The book's website all the details, and how exactly I had missed the fact that this work was soon to be in existence at all is beyond me. Anyway, this is the bailiwick of our associate editor Kelly Baker, so we hope she’ll have a chance to blog about this book more extensively down the road. In the meantime, here’s a brief description, and I look forward to delving much further into this work!"

American narratives often celebrate the nation's rich heritage of religious freedom. There is, however, a less told and often ignored part of the story: the ways that intolerance and cultures of hate have manifested themselves within American religious history and culture.

In the first ever documentary survey of religious intolerance from the colonial era to the present, volume editors John Corrigan and Lynn S. Neal define religious intolerance and explore its history and manifestations, including hate speech, discrimination, incarceration, expulsion, and violence. Organized thematically, the volume combines the editors' discussion with more than 150 striking primary texts and pictures that document intolerance toward a variety of religious traditions. Moving from anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan propaganda to mob attacks on Mormons, the lynching of Leo Frank, the kidnapping of "cult" members, and many other episodes, the volume concludes with a chapter addressing the changing face of religious intolerance in the twenty-first century, with examples of how the problem continues to this day.

Howard Zinn (1922-2010)

by John G. Turner

The world notices the passing of very few historians, but Howard Zinn's death yesterday made the headlines for obvious reasons. It's hard for me to think of an historian of Zinn's generation who exerted more influence on the way that Americans view their past.

For several years, I've been using a "dueling banjos" approach in my survey class (explicitly borrowed from Lendor Calder). I assign Zinn's People's History and a diametrically opposed text. Students identify and has out the differences. [I've tried Paul Johnson's History of the American People and Schweikart and Allen's Patriot's History. If anyone has a suggestion of something else to pair with Zinn, I'm all eyes].

The shortcomings of Zinn's book are obvious to me and to many students. For starters, there is hardly any sense of change over time, no recognition of the tremendous material gains for all classes of Americans over the past hundred years. If one cares about American religious history, it's a bit painful to give students a text that only touches on religion in a sympathetic manner by way of the Berrigan brothers. At the same time, I've never assigned a "textbook" that students so readily engage, whether they like Zinn's arguments or not. I am grateful to Howard Zinn for getting so many of my students to take an interest in U.S. History.

The Associated Press had this to say about Zinn on a more personal level:

Professor Zinn himself was an impressive-looking man, tall and rugged with wavy hair. An experienced public speaker, he was modest and engaging in person, more interested in persuasion than in confrontation.

I can attest to the latter. Several years ago, one of my classes noticed a rather obvious factual error in People's History. Zinn was trying too hard to make the case that many Americans opposed the Second World War.

Thus, we fired off an email to Zinn:

My undergraduate survey classes have been profitably reading your People's History this semester. We're learning to read all sources critically and have a question about a detail in your book. Can you help us resolve the following?

On p. 418 (2003 edition) you write, "Our of 10 million drafted for the armed forces during World War II, only 43,000 refused to fight. But this was three times the proportion of C.O.'s in World War I."

On p. 371 (WWI): "About 65,000 men declared themselves conscientious objectors and asked for noncombatant service."

How could 43,000 in WWII be a larger proportion than 65,000 in WWI? Our understanding is that more individuals were drafted during the Second World War. Can you help?

The then 84-year-old Zinn promptly wrote back:

Thank you for calling that to my attention. A gross error! I think my absolute figures are right, but what I say about "proportion" is wrong. I don't remember where I got that information but I'll look into it. You can use this as a lesson for your students on how historians can get things wrong!

Best wishes,
Howard Zinn

For a man who received sacks of both positive and negative mail about his work, I found the response extraordinarily gracious and a testimony to a kind and gentle spirit. May we respond similarly to our critics!

Writing American History Textbooks and Teaching Religion: An Interview with Paul S. Boyer

[Crossposted from the Historical Society blog]

Randall Stephens

What to cover? What not to cover? What makes an event, individual, or movement worthy of our attention?

History professors and high school history teachers spend quite a bit of time thinking about those questions. If you have to get through the sweep of American history (pre-Columbian to 1865) in just one semester, then you're going to need to make some cuts. Goodbye obscure Puritan theologian. Hello slave insurrectionist. Hardly enough time in class to talk about how each colony took shape. King Philip's War is interesting, but how much time on center stage does it deserve? For those who teach Western Civilization or the West in the World, good luck figuring out content and coverage. The same questions about scope and range occupy the time of history textbook writers.

Last weekend I caught up with the historian and general bonhomie Paul S. Boyer at a conference on Adventism in Portland, Maine. Boyer, Merle Curti Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, is the author of a number of American history books, like Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1968); Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), co-author with Stephen Nissenbau; Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820-1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978); By

the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (NY: Pantheon, 1985); When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); and Fallout: A Historian Reflects on America's Half-Century Encounter With Nuclear Weapons (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998). He's also written articles for the Journal of American History, American Quarterly, American Literary History, The History Teacher, Virginia Quarterly Review, and the William & Mary Quarterly. But he may be best known as the author of a couple of very successful textbooks: The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People (6th edition, 2007); and The American Nation (Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 4th edn., 2002).

In the 2-part Youtube video embedded here, I ask Boyer about the writing of history textbooks and how he thinks about the role of religion in history. He comments at length on how religion has shaped American history and considers some of the major questions textbook writers ask as they go about their task.