Joe Price's Anthem Tour

Art Remillard

"When baseball functions as a civil religion," observes Joe Price in Rounding the Bases, "its true believers--the passionate fans and players who shape their worldviews and daily routines around their devotion to the game--experience a kind of sacramental rejuvenation in the game itself." Joe makes it no secret that he is a "true believer." The book concludes with a thoughtful recollection of his own baseball "conversion" narrative. And this summer, as research for his next book, Joe will sing the national anthem at over 100 minor league baseball parks across the nation.

If you're interested in following along, check out his website , Facebook page, and blog. Joe's wife is also coming along for the ride (they're traveling in an RV), blogging on her side of the story.

Here's one of Joe's dispatches from Florida...

At St. Lucie, a twin pillared sculpture made from remnant steel at Ground Zero graces the entry to the ballpark and pays tribute to the victims of the Twin Towers’ attack. Created by Patrick Cochrane, the piece was donated by retired New York City firefighters who live in the St. Lucie area.

As I entered the ballpark to sing for Florida's Mets, the relic reminded me of the consummate performance of the national anthem by Daniel Rodriguez, then a New York City policeman, at Yankee Stadium shortly after the 9/11 tragedies.

While the crowd’s response to my anthem rendition in St. Lucie was enthusiastic, the most expressive gestures and comments came from Mets players and a vendor. As I walked the gauntlet past the Mets dugout right after I had sung, manager Pedro Lopez gave me thumbs up and said “Good job,” followed by third-baseman Richard Lucas reaching over the dugout railing to shake hands with me. A short time later, the vendor who was roasting pretzels over a charcoal fire near the backstop breezeway expressed great appreciation for the anthem itself. He offered that his wife, Laura Mercado, had auditioned a couple of days earlier to sing for the Mets and hopes to sing soon for one of the games.

A similar connection took place the following day in Jupiter while I was eating a delectable lunch at Le Metro in the Abacoa Town Center. Tiara, the waitress, recommended the broth-based mushroom soup and, as an entrée, grilled scallops, presented over tabouli, sliced tomatoes, and a fan of avocado slices dressed with an herbed balsamic vinegarette. I still savor that meal. When she asked what business had brought me to town, I indicated that I’d be singing for the Hammerheads a few hours later. “Wow!” she exclaimed and then recounted how some years ago when she had been living in Newport Beach, California, her daughter Nicole Gero had sung the national anthem for the Freedom Bowl game.

It’s quite simple: Anthem performances bring people together.

Pole Dancing for Jesus?

Art Remillard

"Pole dancing for Jesus." Seriously? OK, there's something wrong here. I mean, "Jesus Didn't Tap" is one thing. But this? It must be an April Fools joke. After all, it's posted on April 1. And Mr. "Wisenheimer" himself, Mark Oppenheimer, authored the story.

Alas, a quick Google search shows that, indeed, the former-stripper-turned-born-again-Christian Crystal Deans has in fact Christianized her pole dancing classes. And predictably enough, there are plenty of critics. "Pole dancing has transcended from strip clubs," blasts one blogger, who admits that it has become a more mainstream form of exercise, but objects to the lingering "sexual aspect."

Ah sex. Oppenheimer theorizes that this is the story's initial draw. "People are reliably called to attention by the promise of a little skin. And there is something extra naughty when the skin belongs to a Christian, presumed to be a good girl gone bad--the kind of girl who, to quote the old blues song, goes to church on Sunday, then cabaret all day Monday." Yet, in talking with Deans, Oppenheimer discovers someone who simply wants to redefine herself and others. "This has helped a lot of people," Deans explains. "It’s helped people with weight. It’s helped people spice up their marriages. It’s done a lot of good things."

As for the stigma of pole dancing? "I go to church every Sunday and I pray," says Deans . "I talk to God things like that I think there’s nothing wrong with what I do. I teach women to feel good about themselves, to feel empowered and we get in really good shape. God is the only person that judges so anybody who wants to judge me, feel free to but I'm good with God, so that’s what’s important to me and I really don’t care what people think."

So this curious case becomes an example of one person's effort to empower bodies and souls. No joke.

Yes, Researchers Do Know Something About Teaching

Art Remillard

On the final day of FSU’s Graduate Symposium, I had the pleasure of joining Kelly Baker, Betsy Barre, Howell Williams, and Joseph Williams to talk about, "Life after Graduate School." A recurring theme was the difference between teaching and research schools. We outlined strategies for interviewing at such schools, and gave insights on what daily life is like as a teacher or researcher. We also emphasized that, despite outward appearances, folks at teaching schools take research seriously, and folks at research schools take teaching seriously. This point--that researchers strive to excel in the classroom--could use some publicity. Many of the best professors I've known are also productive scholars. They have an infectious enthusiasm about their subject, and give as much thought to their course designs as they do to any article or book. They are also creative, always looking for something new to enliven the classroom. Take our own Paul Harvey, for example. UCCS's Teaching and Learning Center featured Paul and his use of blogs in undergraduate courses. He also elaborated on his jazz-inspired teaching philosophy. No "teacher-centered" or "student-centered" approach for the good Professor Harvey.

I focus on a theme-and-improvisation model, that allows for the discipline and intellectual rigor of a theme while also encouraging soloing and improvisation. I find this model best fits the notion of learning as an active and dynamic process, that occurs for different students on varying levels. I have also found it works to make students feel they have a voice and that their participation is valued and drawn upon in course preparation, even while assuring them that discipline and intellectual rigor have not been sacrificed.

Blogging, jazz, intellectual rigor--very nice. How about some one-upmanship from Mike Pasquier, who has been collaborating with LSU’s Coastal Sustainability Studio to have his students conduct oral histories in Bayou Lafourche. Take a minute and listen to this podcast where Mike and his students discuss the project. The description:

Today’s show is an interview with one of the Center’s partners, Dr. Mike Pasquier, a professor here at LSU in the Religious Studies Department. Dr. Pasquier is working with the Center to establish the Bayou Lafourche Oral History Project. He and his students collected oral histories to gain a better understanding of the role of religion in everyday life among Bayou Lafourche residents. He’s also partnering with the Coastal Sustainability Studio here at LSU, and is using this material to garner a better understanding of how south Louisiana culture is being affected by wetland loss. He teaches courses in U.S. religious history, Christianity, and world religions and his research focuses on the history of Roman Catholicism in the American South, Catholic devotional culture, and religion in colonial Louisiana.

In this episode, the director will speak with him about his ongoing project in Bayou Lafourche, how he uses oral history in the college classroom, and how this research will be useful to a larger, interdisciplinary study assessing the impact of land loss on residents of the area. We’ll get to hear some clips from interviews recorded by some of his students with Bayou Lafourche residents. So join us today as we hear about men murmuring the rosary during Hurricane Betsy, about school children being punished for speaking French on state property, and about how the land and waters where people fish, work, and live is disappearing before our eyes.

What do Puritans, Shakers, Food, Beer, and Running Shoes Have in Common? Eden, of Course!

Art Remillard

“There was this idea that we are the new Adam and the new Eve,” remarks Stephen Prothero in the opening scenes of PBS’s God in America. For Puritans, Eden served as a narrative anchor, a place defined by God's law, which if followed to the letter offered untold heavenly promises. And so the story goes...and goes, and goes. I haven't finished watching the documentary, so I will take Paul's word for it that there wasn't enough attention given to the “brutal” underbelly of this mythology.

Indeed, the voices of power have used Eden to coerce, exclude, and alienate. But from the margins, Eden has also emerged in contests with conventional wisdom. For example, Mother Anne Lee theorized that the real sin of Adam and Eve was sexual intercourse. Lust was the root of all evil, she insisted, and human purity required celibacy. So celibacy it was. Shakers didn't have much luck replenishing their ranks, but they did develop a countercultural way of life from an assumption that God's sexless plan appeared first in Eden.

Jump ahead to today's countercultural movements, and where might we find Eden? Documentaries like Food, Inc. and Beer Wars take aim at corporate giants and cheer the local farmer and brewpub owner. But it's a tough road for the little guy. The machine will manipulate the laws, pressure politicians, exploit workers and vendors, and create an illusion that their cheap food is safe and that their tasteless beer will make baseball interesting. To protest, I might buy my food from Eden Organic, “a principled natural food company.” Or maybe I would join a co-op run by someone like the libertarian food prophet Joel Salatin, who one admirer paraphrased as saying, “if [the United States] had invested the same resources we used to transform the plains into corn and soybeans into building thousands of ponds, we would have Eden.” And if I was in Middletown, Connecticut, I'd enjoy a microbrew in the "beer garden of Eden," at Eli Cannon’s Tap Room Restaurant.

After all of this eating and drinking, I would need to burn off some calories. I'd leave my shoes at home, though, since in Eden, everyone runs barefoot. Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run has become the bible of barefoot running. While telling of the superhuman running abilities of the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico, McDougall also investigates the promises of running shoe companies. He concludes that their products aimed at preventing injuries have done the exact opposite. Cushioned heels, arch supports, springs, and the like. All of it weakens muscles in the feet, ankles, knees, and hips. Moreover, the downward slope of shoes forces the heel to strike first rather than the forefoot, thereby creating a heavier impact.

So, says McDougall, toss your shoes aside! And if your feet aren’t tough enough to handle the roads and rocks, you can fork over $90-$120 for a pair of Vibram FiveFingers. Sure these glorified aqua socks will garner quizzical looks from non-runners. But the payoff, according to the Vibram website, is “a more natural forefoot strike during running.” To make this whole "natural running" thing really evident, Vibram pulled the Eden card.

Open the microsite, http://www.youarethetechnology.com/ and you will see the names of various shoe technologies, all mashed together. Slowly the names disappear, behind a ghostly, echoing beat. Then two bodies appear, a man and a women, Adam and Eve, naked except for a pair of Vibrams. Printed about their bodies are slogans, “we’ll never out-engineer the human body,” “the natural running movement grows stronger by the day,” “you know how to run just like you know how to sneeze."

The website represents something of an embodied protest, a "country boy salute" waved at the major shoe companies. Of course, it also invites runners back to an injury-free Eden. Sounds good, right? Last spring my knee began bothering me and I thought surgery was inevitable. Luckily, a physical therapist recommended running barefoot in the grass. So I did, slowly at first. Eventually my knee pain went away. Then I became a Vibram convert. In November, I ran a marathon in them. I didn’t run particularly well, but my training had been interrupted three months earlier when I broke my toe. I tripped on a rock, while running in my Vibrams.

I might be "born to run," but I'm also accident prone. Yet here I am, still wearing the Vibrams (when it isn't 14 degrees and snowing), aware that the Eden mythology can't negate the rocky, uneven realities of life. That seems to be the trend. When Eden goes from imagination to the real world, things get messy.

Review: Anetso, the Cherokee Ball Game

Art Remillard

Michael Zogry first learned of the Cherokee precursor to lacrosse, called “anetso,” in a class with Raymond Fogelson of the University of Chicago. The dearth of scholarship on the game surprised Zogry, who saw it as a fascinating blend of athletics and religious ritual. He read carefully the two major treatments of anetso—Fogelson’s 1962 dissertation and James Mooney’s 1890 article “Cherokee Ball Play”—and realized that there was more to the story. So when Zogry began his doctoral work, he aspired to offer a new perspective. This culminated in his innovative, compelling, and thoroughly researched, Anetso, the Cherokee Ball Game: At the Center of Ceremony and Identity.

Zogry spent four years studying anetso before seeing it in person in 1997. He arrived at the fairgrounds in Cherokee, North Carolina armed with a video camera and an intellectual suitcase stuffed with names like Bourdieu, Bell, Grimes, Geertz, Lévi-Strauss, Smith, Turner, and others. Theories raced through Zogry’s head, when suddenly reality struck—literally. As the game progressed, Zogry watched the tiny white ball float toward him and the players following closely behind. Unable to evade the rush, Zogry was knocked to the ground. This collision, the author recalls, “has continued to assert itself as a strong memory. I now think of it as a metaphor for describing my process of grappling with the relevant issues, and frankly, the limitations of my scholarly perspective to apprehend even this bit of culture in anything but a fleeting way” (15).

Specifically, Zogry came to realize that he needed a new vocabulary to discuss this game, which is more than “just a game.” In The Savage Mind, Lévi-Strauss said that a game has a set of rules and ends when one side prevails. In contrast, a ritual, which bears resemblance to a game, aims to produce, in Lévi-Strauss’s words, “a particular type of equilibrium between two sides.” While perhaps a useful point of departure, and certainly still influential, Zogry insists that anetso does not fit neatly within this conceptual framework. It is a game, to be sure. But Zogry demonstrates that anetso connects to the most significant dimensions of Cherokee religious identity. As a result, the game "resists and problematizes" the classifications of Lévi-Strauss and the likeminded (1).

Zogry starts by looking at anetso’s relation to Cherokee cultural narratives. Among the stories he retells is one of a pre-human contest between the birds and animals, where, interestingly enough, two small animals approach the bird team and request to join their side. The team captain, an eagle, accepts the defectors and fits them with wings, making one a bat and the other a flying squirrel. When the game begins, the retrofitted rodents lead the birds to victory. According to Zogry, the Cherokee still recount this narrative, particularly to the youth, to warn against boastfulness and to emphasize the importance of “inclusiveness” and “adaptability” (48). This sense of tribal solidarity was essential during the “Era of Great Change” (1799-1838). Then, missionaries criticized the game for its perceived “heathenish” underpinnings, and calls for removal became louder and louder. Meanwhile, Zogry shows how the Cherokee defiantly played anetso, using it as “a vehicle for expression of Cherokee identity” (105).

In addition to detailing the broad narrative and social meanings of anetso, Zogry also examines rituals directly associated with the game. Preparation begins weeks in advance with public and private rituals. Ball teams hire conjurers, who enlist assistance from “other-than-human persons.” Players avoid sexual contact, while abiding by a strict dietary code that prohibits consumption of young birds, small animals, or frogs. Zogry finds that most of these traditions have carried into contemporary performances of anetso. And while most players are active Christians, few see any conflict between their Cherokee and Christian practices. This is a perspective that has developed with time, just as anetso has changed over the ages. But Zogry insists that the game is still vital, despite claims from informants that it's not. “The ethic of participation,” he retorts, “the way the players carry themselves and acquit themselves on the field, the honor of performing to the best of their ability in a contest that their ancestors once played on the same land, these remain meaningful reasons to participate for Cherokee adults and teenagers” (145).

In the book's closing pages, Zogry considers the broader implications of his findings. For example, he takes aim at Allen Guttmann, who in From Ritual to Record, argues that in the modern sporting world “the attachment to the realm of the transcendent has been severed.” Guttmann maintains that a priest or minister at a football game does not serve the same function as a shaman at an Indian ball game. Without the minister, the football game will go on. Without the shaman, there is no ball game. Zogry is unconvinced. “Football, like anetso, provides a cultural locus for a range of activities, some that can be termed ‘ritual’ and some ‘religious.’ Preliminary and postgame activities, propitiatory activities, community involvement, even gambling serve to weave the experience of this game into the social lives of players and spectators” (221). To be clear, Zogry does not advocate collapsing religion and sports. Rather, he seems comfortable with ambiguity and open to “rethinking the categories in a manner that hopefully is more accurate” (235).

Specialists in Cherokee religion, ritual studies, and religion and sports will appreciate this book. Zorgy uses an impressive array of sources, from his own fieldwork, to newspapers, manuscripts, personal journals, and travel accounts. The book is thoroughly interdisciplinary, drawing insights from historians, anthropologists, and theorists of religion, ritual, sports, and culture. Additionally, Zogry hints at possibilities for more study. He mentions that women presently play anetso, a new development in the game’s history and “a fruitful area of future research” (184). I hope that Zogry explores this "fruitful" terrain, perhaps making it part of a broader treatment of Native American women and sports. I wonder how female performances of anetso would compare with the Navajo and Apache “Sunrise Ceremony.” In this rite-of-passage ceremony, young women arise early in the morning and run out toward the rising sun and back, thereby recreating the myth of the “White Painted Woman,” a deity who reversed the aging process by moving toward the sun and melding with her younger self. The ritualized running also emphasizes strength and health, in contrast to tribal plagues such as alcoholism and type-2 diabetes. Zogry has done the intellectual work to examine this and other religious/athletic performances, and I'm eager to see where he takes us next.

CFP: Undergrad Conference on Race in America

Friday and Saturday, March 25-26, 2011
Saint Francis University
Loretto, Pennsylvania 15940

CALL FOR PAPERS

We cordially invite undergraduates to submit proposals for the fifth annual North American Undergraduate Conference in Religion and Philosophy. Submissions are encouraged from students majoring in all academic fields.

Although any paper related to religion and philosophy will be considered, priority will be given to those addressing this year’s theme, “Race in America.” As philosopher Cornel West asserted, “A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.” Accordingly, this year’s conference will forthrightly address philosophical and religious questions of race and how these questions relate to politics, culture, society, and history. To begin our conversation, this year’s keynote speaker will be George Yancy, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University and author of Black Bodies, White Gazes: The Continuing Significance of Race.

Paper proposals (roughly 250 words) should give a concise description of the presentation. The deadline for proposals is February 18, 2011. Please include your full name, paper title, institution, e-mail, phone number, and the name and contact information of your major professor. Presenters must submit their full paper by March 11, 2011 to be considered for conference prizes. Proposals and final papers should be sent via e-mail attachment to Dr. Arthur Remillard.

The keynote address will be given on Friday evening, with a student-led discussion to follow. All student presentations will be given on Saturday from approximately 9:00am-5:00pm. This conference is open to the public and free for presenters and non-presenters alike. For more information, directions, contacts, scheduling, etc., please visit our website and join our Facebook group.

This conference is organized by Saint Francis University and Westminster College, with support from SFU’s School of Arts and Letters, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, and the Institute for Ethics.

Stuff that Makes Jesus Tap (Or Just Cry)

Art Remillard

I feel like an impostor posting this--it seems so, well, Randall-esque. Alas, here I am, alerting readers to a fine collection of images at The Huffington Post entitled, "The Most Ridiculous Record Covers Of All Time." Indeed, some covers are from Christian musicians. I think it's safe to assume that if Jesus saw these, he would tap--repeatedly. Here's a sample...

Don't Mess With the Neo-Macho Christians!

Art Remillard

When I think of “muscular Christianity,” I don’t immediately imagine the “body as temple” theologians, as Clifford Putney has called them. Yes, the Luther Gulicks gave the movement intellectual heft. And yes, it was Gulick who encouraged the Presbyterian minister James Naismith to invent basketball—or as I like to call it, “That Sport Lebron James Plays.” All good stuff, really. But when I think of muscular Christianity, my first image is Billy Sunday.

Theology meant little to the revivalist. Instead, Sunday was more concerned with putting some muscle on to Jesus. “Lord save us,” he prayed, “from off-handed, flabby-cheeked, brittle-boned, weak-kneed, thin-skinned, pliable, plastic, spineless, effeminate, sissified, three-carat Christianity.” In Sunday’s eyes, Jesus “was the greatest scrapper that ever lived.”

Sunday represented a side of muscular Christianity that was thoroughly fretting the so-called “feminization” of Christianity. With each call to fling a “fastball at the devil,” Sunday sought to pull the faithful into his manly zone of influence.

While baseball was a national obsession in Sunday's time, it's a cure for insomnia now. Indeed, for many young men walking in to my classroom, ultimate fighting has become the sport of choice. I don’t watch mixed-martial-arts (MMA), nor do I understand its appeal. But it is popular. And as you might expect, MMA is developing an evangelical edge.

Jason David Frank is a rising star in MMA circles who first gained fame starring in—wait for it—the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Frank, a sixth-degree black, is also co-owner of Jesus Didn’t Tap, a MMA merchandising company. In ultimate fighting, “tapping out” is lingo for forfeiting a fight. “Jesus is the only one that truly didn't tap,” Frank says while describing the company's name. “They say, ‘Oh, he was nailed to the cross so he couldn’t tap.’ Well, you can verbally tap, you can verbally cry, ‘I quit! I give up!’ That's not what he did. He got crucified for all our sins.”

So this incarnation of Billy Sunday might not swing a bat, but he does beat the snot out of people—in the name of Jesus. “When I'm in the cage, I'm full of rage, I'll ground, pound, kick you in the face, but it's all good ‘cause I’m in the right place. The power I get is driven from God, so don’t be mad, it’s just my job.”

Frank isn’t making money from this venture yet, and he might not. But the message seems to Christianize America’s “neo-macho” discourse. Journalist Richard Goldstein coined the term “neo-macho” to describe the sustained rebellion against feminism that only amplified after 9/11. Then, the eloquent Toby Keith united a nation, singing, “Justice will be served/And the battle will rage/This big dog will fight/When you rattle his cage/And you'll be sorry that you messed with The U.S. of A./‘Cause we'll put a boot in your ass/It’s the American way.”

Neo-macho man is certainly still with us. He tells us that our pickup truck isn't complete without a RAMBOX to “carry your tools” in. And for the evangelical version, he's amused when a preacher says something about Jesus being a “scrapper.” But he really likes it when that preacher punches someone in the face (instead of turning the other cheek).

Lost in Thought About Lost

Art Remillard

(Warning: Lost spoiler alert!)

Yesterday, Lost resolved six seasons of mystery not by bluntly revealing every secret, but by emphasizing that the road to individual redemption passes through a community. In a Flannery O'Connor-esque manner, many of the characters reached this point of enlightenment only when facing death. In transcending their own interests, characters made individual sacrifices for the common good. I think there's something to this O'Connor connection, since in a previous season we saw one character reading Everything that Rises Must Converge.

Anyway, the finale concluded with a mawkish family reunion, bearing all of the traces of a heavenly scene, but avoiding heavy-handed theological prescriptions. (So will Newsweek's Lisa Miller's Heaven will get a post-Lost boost?) While I went to bed ambivalent about this scene, I awoke thinking otherwise. The writers left us with an emblem of Lost's central theme: "live together, or die alone." Yes, they were literally dead, but they were metaphorically reborn through their bonds of friendship.

At first, I was tempted to see Lost as a jab at Jean-Paul Sartre--"Hell is other people." There's no lack of philosophy in the show. But I learned that Sartre had something else in mind when he wrote this, something very Lost-ish.

"Hell is other people" has always been misunderstood. It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is something totally different. I mean that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because . . . when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves, . . .we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves. Into whatever I say about myself someone else’s judgment always enters. Into whatever I feel within myself someone else’s judgment enters. . . . But that does not at all mean that one cannot have relations with other people. It simply brings out the capital importance of all other people for each one of us.

Sartre and Lost almost have a similar message. The relationship between the individual and community is hard work and sometimes hellish. But it's also necessary and fundamental to life. More than any show that I've seen, Lost captures this message.

One final note... I've spent far too much time this morning thinking and reading about Lost. By far, the most insightful analysis I've seen comes from S. Brent Plate over at Religion Dispatches. It is worth reading even if you know little about the show. He concludes, "The greatest fiction of Lost is the apocalyptic tale that we are individuals, that it is survival of the fittest. Lost then, is the antithesis of Lord of the Flies, but also of the so-called reality television shows that extol the individual 'dancers,' 'idols,' and 'survivors.' Those are the real fictions. Lost reveals itself as reality."

A "Great Match Race" and another Surprising Jewish Athlete

Art Remillard

My summer break begins, and an ambitious reading list awaits. At the top of my pile are two books--interestingly enough--both about endurance. First, John Eisenberg's The Great Match Race: When North Met South in America's First Sports Spectacle.

The Great Match Race is a captivating account of America's first sports spectacle, a horse race that pitted North against South in three grueling heats. On a bright afternoon in May 1823, an unprecedented sixty thousand people showed up to watch two horses run the equivalent of nine Kentucky Derbys in a few hours' time. Eclipse was the majestic champion representing the North, and Henry, an equine arriviste, was the pride of the South. Their match race would come to represent a watershed moment in American history, crystallizing the differences that so fundamentally divided the country. The renowned sportswriter John Eisenberg captures all the pulse-pounding drama and behind-the-scenes tensions in a page-turning mix of history, horse racing, and pure entertainment.

Next up is Alan S. Katchen's Abel Kiviat, National Champion: Twentieth-Century Track & Field and the Melting Pot. Even though I'm a running geek, I'll confess that I had never heard of Kiviat until I saw this title. So I'm very excited to read it, and recommend it to all my running geek friends...

Abel Kiviat (1892-1991) was one of track and field’s legendary personalities, a world record-holder and Olympic medalist in the metric mile. A teenage prodigy, he defeated Hall of Fame runners before his twentieth birthday. Alan S. Katchen brings Kiviat’s fascinating story to life and re-creates a lost world, when track and field was at the height of its popularity and occupying a central place in America’s sporting world. The oldest of seven children of Moishe and Zelda Kiviat, Jewish immigrants from Poland, Abel competed as "the Hebrew runner" for New York’s famed Irish-American Athletic Club and was elected its captain. Katchen’s engaging biography centers Abel Kiviat’s life and his sport firmly in the context of American social history. As a quintessential New Yorker, Kiviat embodies the urban and ethnic roots of American track. From his first schoolboy competitions on city playgrounds, to his world records at Madison Square Garden, to his pioneering role as track’s press steward in the age of emerging media, Kiviat’s life reveals how his sport was shaped by the culture of the emerging metropolis.

Without reading either book, I can only speculate that both emphasize that America's sporting landscape wasn't always dominated by the "holy trinity" of sports: baseball, basketball, and football. Additionally, it seems that they do what good sports histories should do--show how sports shape and are shaped by the powerful social forces of a given time and place.

So it would seem that my summer is off to a great start. We'll see what happens by August.

On Illness Stories and Hospital Beds

Art Remillard

I’m blogging from a bed. It's supposed to look like a hospital bed. More on that later. For now, let’s talk about stories.

Whenever I do research, I’m not looking for sources. I’m looking for stories. Sometimes I find fragments of stories in letters and diaries. Other times I find more detailed stories in memoirs and autobiographies. In any case, since I write religious histories, I want stories that convey a certain essence—something that is reflective, insightful, unique, aesthetically compelling—something that gets to the heart of an issue, event, or idea.

But even when I do find that gem of a story, I worry that I’m just not getting everything. Recall Mike Pasquier’s post on this very point as it related to Hurricane Katrina. “The circumstances just seem too aberrant, too disjointed from ordinary time and space, to capture the religious experiences of the moment,” he laments. “Scholars of religious studies, myself included, tend to use phrases like ‘lived religion’ and ‘extraliturgical religion’ to describe religion outside the carefully scripted confines of ‘official religion’ or ‘institutional religion.’ But these categories seem only to get at the before and after the storm; the now remains elusive.”

Stories of the storm, filtered through memory, will always cast a veil of mystery. Is it even possible, I wonder, to find a “now” perspective? Probably not. But illness stories might come close. In At the Will of the Body, medical sociologist Arthur Frank chronicles his journey through two illnesses, a heart attack and cancer. Religion and storytelling play no small role in his account.

Stories we tell ourselves about what is happening to us are dangerous because they are powerful. Stories come to us from many sources: some we seek, many happen without our notice, others impose themselves on our lives. We have to choose carefully which stories to live with, which to use to answer the question of what is happening to us. Jacob’s wrestling became a story I lived with as part of my personal mythology of illness. This is what it is to be ill: to wrestle through the long night, injured, and if you prevail until the sun rises, to receive a blessing. Through Jacob’s story, illness became an adventure.

Frank elaborates on the significance of stories and spirituality in The Wounded Storyteller and The Renewal of Generosity. He emphasizes how a diagnosis wounds both a person's body and identity. Reconstructing both calls for a new story, one that accounts for the illness and all of its implications. Caregivers can play a significant role in this process, if they are truly caregivers. “I reserve the name ‘caregiver’ for the people who are willing to listen to ill persons and respond to their individual experiences,” he explains in At the Will of the Body.

Is Frank’s illness story—and others like it—“now” enough? “Cancer never disappears,” he affirms. Frank will always live with his illness, and tell his illness story. And this story's religious dimension might influence readers too. As Martin Marty put it in his review, “this short work can transform lives or at least ways of thinking about living.”

This brings me to my faux-hospital bed. It’s Relay for Life time at St. Francis University. Students from my “Narrative Medicine” course decided to set up 3 hospital beds, with 3 volunteers acting as cancer patients for 24 hours. Somehow, I ended up being one of the patients. I've assumed the identity of a 40-year-old brain cancer patient. I'm married, with two kids. I’m also angry, depressed, disoriented, and enveloped in pain. My motor skills are such that the “nurses” have to feed me.

So I have a story. It's a story of humility, mainly. I've ceded my freedom to move, sleep, and eat. It's nothing like the real thing, but maybe I'll leave with an improved sense of empathy. After all, throughout the day and night, survivors have stopped to share their illness stories. The depth and detail has been nothing short of astonishing. Every story resonates with spiritual force, causing me to reflect on the limits of life, and the reality of death.

I'm almost finished now. I have crossed over in to another identity, as well as another discipline, and will be resuming "normalcy" soon. I will bring back new insights. In particular, maybe on my next trip to the archives, I'll pay closer attention to stories of illness. They seem to make the “now” a bit less elusive.

Surprising or Otherwise Interesting Primary Sources, Part III a: Lacrosse, the Jesuit Relations, and a Man of "Sense"

Art Remillard

Just south of Syracuse, New York, members of the Onondaga Nation regularly gather in a ritualized celebration of community, tradition, and family. It’s a rather sweaty affair—but then again, games of lacrosse generally are. “Families here have been playing lacrosse together for a long time. It is part of our lives,” says Chief Irving Powless. Unlike the game you might be familiar with, the Onondaga version of lacrosse is quite unique. Their field has neither boundaries nor standard lengths. The number of participants vary from game to game. Clans make up the teams, so a game might have 5 against 30, depending on who shows up. And people of all ages play, from 10 to 80 (as far as I can tell, Powless is in his late 70s and still plays). None of this has made the game any less intense. Rumor has it that when Jim Brown came to the reservation to play, a 145-pound Powless knocked him to the ground. It’s no wonder why the Cherokee nicknamed lacrosse “the little brother of war.”

But the vigorous play is not for show. Instead, it fuses with effort and joy, and expresses a living connection with the past and present. As Powless explains, “When we play a game here on Mother Earth, a game is taking place up there in the Land of the Creator at the same time. . . . So then after we pass away and we are through we have a means by which we can get our stick up into the Creator's world so that we'll play again.”

This brings me to Paul’s post on the Jesuit Relations. The Relations holds our first written description of lacrosse, which certainly did not emphasize the community-binding function of the game. Instead, we see a prime example of the spiritual competition at work between French missionaries and medicine men--or more broadly, between European Catholicism and Native American traditions.
In 1636, living among the Huron in Ontario, Jesuit missionary Jean de Brébeuf commented on the game that he would call “lacrosse”—named such because the sticks reminded him of the “crosier” carried by bishops in religious processions. The connection between Catholicism and Indian culture ended there. Brébeuf had no love for the “sorcerer” who prescribed lacrosse as cure for individual and communal illness.

In the classroom, I use Brébeuf’s description of lacrosse to illustrate James Axtell's point that French missionaries labored to become “a man of ‘sense.’” That is, Black Robes went to great lengths learning, documenting, and absorbing Indian culture, language, customs, and religion. The end goal (bad pun?) was to build status within the tribe, and challenge the "shamanic rival for spiritual leadership.”

Below is Brébeuf’s description of Indian lacrosse. He also talks about a game of chance called "dish." You can find this writing in both Allen Greer’s aforementioned The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries in Seventeenth-Century North America and online.

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Of three kinds of games especially in use among these Peoples,—namely, the games of lacrosse, dish, and straw,—the first two are, they say, most healing. Is not this worthy of compassion? There is a poor sick man, fevered of body and almost dying, and a miserable Sorcerer will order for him, as a cooling remedy, a game of lacrosse. Or the sick man himself, sometimes, will have dreamed that he must die unless the whole country shall play lacrosse for his health; and, no matter how little may be his credit, you will see then in a beautiful field, Village contending against Village, as to who will play lacrosse the better, and betting against one another Beaver robes and Porcelain collars, so as to excite greater interest.

Sometimes, also, one of these jugglers will say that the whole Country is sick, and he asks a game of lacrosse to heal it; no more needs to be said, it is published immediately everywhere; and all the Captains of each Village give orders that all the young men do their duty in this respect, otherwise some great misfortune would befall the whole Country.

The game of dish is also in great renown in affairs of medicine, especially if the sick man has dreamed of it. This game is purely one of chance: they play it with six plum-stones, white on one side and black on the other, in a dish that they strike very roughly against the ground, so that the plum-stones leap up and fall, sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other. The game consists in throwing all white or all black; they usually play Village against Village. All the people gather in a Cabin, and they dispose themselves on poles, arranged as high as the roof, along both sides. The sick man is brought in in a blanket, and that man of the Village who is to shake the dish (for there is only one on each side set apart for the purpose), he, I say, walks behind, his head and face wrapped in his garment. They bet heavily on both sides. When the man of the opposite party takes the dish they cry at the top of their voice achinc, achinc, achinc, " three, three, three," or perhaps ioio, ioio, ioio, wishing him to throw only three white or three black. You might have seen this winter a great crowd returning from here to their Villages, having lost their moccasins at a time when there was nearly three feet of snow,—apparently as cheerful, nevertheless, as if they had won. The most remarkable thing I notice in regard to this matter is the disposition they bring to it. There are some who fast several days before playing: the evening before, they all meet together in a Cabin, and make a feast to find out what will be the result of the game. The one chosen to hold the dish takes the stones, and puts them promiscuously into a dish, and covers it, so as to prevent any one from putting his hand into it. That done, they sing; the song over, the dish is uncovered, and the plum-stones are found all white or all black. On this point, I asked a Savage if those against whom they were to play did not do the same on their side, and if they might not find the plum-stones in the same condition. He said they did; "And yet, " said I to him," all can not win;" to that he knew not what to answer. He informed me besides of two remarkable things: in the first place, that they choose, to handle the dish, some one who had dreamed that he would win, or who had a charm; moreover, those who have a charm do not conceal it, and carry it everywhere with them: we have, they tell me, one of these in our Village, who rubs the plum-stones with a certain ointment and hardly ever fails to win. Secondly, that in making the attempt some of the plum-stones disappear, and are found some time after in the dish with the others.

Among all these fooleries, I dare not speak of the infamies and uncleanness which the Devil makes to slip into them, causing them to see in a dream that they can only be healed by wallowing in all sorts of filth. May he who has saved us by the blood of the Lamb grant to remedy this as soon as possible, accepting for this purpose, if need be, our souls and lives, that we most willingly offer to him for the salvation of these Peoples, and the remission of our own sins.

What about Southern Irreligion?

Art Remillard

As one brilliant (and humble) reviewer summarized, volume one of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture "is comprehensive, relevant, and representative of past and present trends in the field of southern religion." If there is something missing here, chances are Sam Hill's hulking Encyclopedia of Religion in the South would have it.

Yet this morning, while flipping through the entries and indexes of both, I couldn't find a single reference to southern irreligion. No atheism, agnosticism, freethinking, or skepticism. And why would I? As Randall "Emotive Cutting Language" Stephens rightly said, the South is "the prayer capitol of America." But academic historians are in the business of finding new and unexplored topics (and convincing us of how important these topics are). So isn't there someone willing to fill this gap? Well, we might just have somewhere to begin with John Sparks's Kentucky's Most Hated Man: Charles Chilton Moore & The Bluegrass Blade. From the book description:

...born in 1837, [Charles Chilton Moore] was the grandson of religious reformer Barton W. Stone, and was himself a minister in Versailles, Kentucky, before he left the church, passing through deism and agnosticism to eventually declare himself an atheist. Moore founded The Blue Grass Blade newspaper in 1884 in Lexington. He was only able to publish sporadically due to financial and legal problems originating mostly because of the paper's editorial content--attacks on citizens that Moore considered to be bigots (including Bible-thumpers and whiskey distillers) and his advocacy of unpopular positions such as agnosticism and women's suffrage. . . . Moore is considered one of the fathers of American atheism. The Blue Grass Blade was circulated across the country, gaining him notoriety among both the religious and non-religious. . . . His legal trials resulted in landmark Federal judicial decisions which set precedents in the areas of both freedom of religion and
freedom of the press.

Stylistically, the book is similar to Sparks's biography on "Raccoon" John Smith (subtitled, Frontier Kentucky's Most Famous Preacher--I'm seeing a pattern here). In his review, Craig Thompson Friend lamented Sparks's penchant for prolonged digressions, reliance on outdated sources, and lack of attention to the historiography. The same can be said of Kentucky's Most Hated Man. But Sparks is not an academic historian. And he seems rather unconcerned with our insights and criticisms. Still, the book might be conversation starter. Citing Susan Jacoby's Freethinkers, Sparks observes that Moore came along during the "Golden Age of Freethought," and modeled himself after "The Great Agnostic," Robert Green Ingersoll.

So Moore localized a national freethinking trend in Dixie. He also felt the Bible Belt's wrath as a result. The debates that Moore generated found southern evangelicals articulating their beliefs in new ways, fending off the unique challenges put forth by this atheist interlocutor. How many Moores were there in the New South? Who knows. But somewhere, there's an ambitious doctoral student searching for a topic--hopefully that person will be willing to write an encyclopedia entry or two.

More Surprises

Art Remillard

Sports have sometimes given religious minorities a venue for both displaying their faith and diminishing the majority's suspicions. Consider pugilist Benny Leonard, who from 1917 to 1925 held the lightweight championship. The New Yorker was more than just an athlete. Writing in 1980, novelist Budd Schulberg recalled watching the boxer in his prime, climbing into the ring with the Star of David on his trunks, giving Jews hopes of “sweet revenge for all the bloody noses, split lips, and mocking laughter at pale little Jewish boys." Over time, the "mocking laughter" quieted. Journalist Arthur Brisbane speculated that Leonard did “more to conquer anti-Semitism than a thousand textbooks.” Leonard was not the only Jewish boxer battling both opponents and bigotry. From 1901 to 1938, there were 27 Jewish world champions.

Jews also muscled into the mainstream on the baseball diamond. During the 1930s and 1940s, “Hammerin’” Hank Greenberg amassed 331 home runs and 1276 RBIs, while maintaining a .313 lifetime batting average. Greenberg played his best years in Detroit, where folks like Father Charles Coughlin and Henry Ford didn't make life easy for Jews. Yet, Greenburg’s face appeared on the cover of the Wheaties box, an “all-American” cereal if there ever was one.

As for Jewish basketball players, see David Vyorst's new documentary, First Basket. He explains in a recent NPR interview:

[At] the turn of the 20th century, most of the Jewish people who came into the country moved into the lowery side of Manhattan. So people lived within ethnic communities, largely. And many of the teams grew out of those communities. Whereas sports is a way where you want to fit in with the culture writ large, basketball - the way that these kids played basketball, they were able to play basketball, kind of become American, but on their own terms.

Here's the trailer:

A Surprisingly Unsurprising Look at Southern Jewish Life in the Age of Leo Frank

Art Remillard

Despite the request, I have nothing interesting to say about the Leo Frank lynching. Kelly Baker's insights (here and here) are far more interesting than mine--trust me. But wait, my un-impressiveness doesn't end here. I also have nothing new to say about Southern Jewish life in the Frank era. So why am I writing this? Because of Samuel Farkas.

When I began researching the post-Reconstruction South's civil religious discourses, I was determined include a Jewish voice. Based on my limited knowledge of the Frank lynching, I assumed that Jews were surrounded by open hostility. Yet, during one archive visit, I met with relatives of Samuel Farkas, a Jewish immigrant from Hungary who arrived in Albany, Georgia after the Civil War. With limited resources, Farkas launched a mule-trading business and, within ten years, rose to become a distinguished businessman and property owner. By the time he died in 1914, he collected rent from approximately 400 people. He also left behind glorious legends, to include a classic circus-act-gone-wrong story. When a circus lion refused to release its trainer's head, the ringmaster begged anyone with a gun to shoot the lion. Sitting in the crowd, Farkas didn’t have a gun. But he did carry a cane, which he reportedly jammed down the lion’s throat to save the day.

As I talked more with his relatives, it became clear that Farkas was a noteworthy public figure in Albany who commanded attention and respect. They never indicated that his Jewishness was a major problem. So I continued touring the Gulf South, sleeping in my tent, visiting archives, and talking with locals. And I found more Farkas-esque figures. There were thriving Jewish politicians, businesspeople, sheriffs, mayors, philanthropists, “joiners,” and social climbers. Moreover, they did all of this before, during, and after the Frank lynching. What about anti-Semitism? It was there. And it was clear that for some Southern white Protestants, Jews were held with a degree of suspicion. But it wasn't as bad as I had expected, and I was eager to begin writing. Then I dug in to the historiography. Talk about a downer. As Louis Schmier summarized, the Frank affair “hovered like a foreboding raven about the heads of Jews, evoking fear and insecurity.” But at the end of the day, Southern white Protestants tended to respect Jews for their charitable deeds, business acumen, and commitment to the Old Testament. Other historians have agreed, to include Leonard Rogoff. (If you haven't already, take the time to read his provocatively entitled article “Is the Jew White?: The Racial Place of the Southern Jew.")

So my chapter on Jewish civil religious discourse wasn't as sexy as I had hoped. But that might not be a bad thing. In conversation after conversation, I find scholar-friends surprised by my findings, particularly in light of the region's noted anti-Catholicism. In Florida, for example, Sidney Catts won the governorship in 1916, even though he ran as a member of the Prohibition Party and had no real political experience. But he did preach the gospel of anti-Catholicism. Catts was a close ally of Leo Frank’s principal agitator, Tom Watson. On matters of religious prejudice, however, the two had their differences. When rumors of Catts’s anti-Semitism circulated during the governor’s tenure, Catts moved quickly to reject the accusation. For Catts, Jews were presumably “true Southerners”—Catholics, on the other hand, were anything but.

Why the difference? I can only speculate. For now, I'll continue telling this surprisingly unsurprising story.

Faulkner, Dirty Harry, and My Disappointing Summer Break

Art Remillard

Summers always begin with high ambitions, and end with crushing disappointments. Case in point: this summer—as a “side project”—I had hoped to read a handful of Faulkner novels. Yet last week, I managed to finish only one, The Unvanquished. I started here since, as Faulkner once remarked, it is “the easiest to read.” (I have the “lazy gene”—don’t judge me.) Born from a series of short stories, Faulkner introduces the names (Sartoris and Snopes) and places (Yoknapatawpha County) that populate his other novels. More significantly, The Unvanquished is an accessible entry into a central theme in Faulkner’s body of work, that people posses, as he summarized in his Nobel Prize speech, “a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”

Indeed, in the novel’s opening pages, as the Civil War rages, we find the twelve-year-old Bayard Sartoris “playing war” with Ringo, his black slave-friend of the same age. This image of youthful ignorance represents a moral point of departure for Bayard, who would slowly resist many of the norms of the white “southern way of life.” When he first sees a “Yankee,” for example, he remarks with incredulity, “He looks just like a man.” The “stranger” is thus humanized, if only for a brief moment.

The final chapter punctuates Bayard’s moral transformation. His father, Colonel John Sartoris, had been a Civil War hero and a “redeemer” during Reconstruction. But Sartoris the Elder is murdered by his rival Ben Redmond. And Sartoris the Younger is bound by an Old South honor code to enact vengeance. Earlier in the novel, Bayard avenges his grandmother’s death, killing off the “murdering scoundrel” Grumby. But the war had since ended, and a new era was emerging. Even Colonel Sartoris, whose past was defined by death and warfare, tells his son before his murder, “I am tired of killing men, no matter what the necessity nor the end.”

So Bayard confronts his father’s murder, armed only with a “turn the other cheek” ethic, cultivated in part by his deceased grandmother. In a surreal series of events, the surprised Redmond stands, fires two shots into the air, and “went away . . . from Mississippi and never came back.” A gathering of bloodthirsty men witness Redmond departing, dumbfounded yet also aware that “maybe there has been enough killing.” They see in Bayard a new kind of courage, which is both counterintuitive and effective. Still, lingering in the background is Ringo, whose skin color puts him on the periphery of Bayard’s imagined sacred community of the New South. Ironically, Bayard’s moral code—and by extension the moral code of the New South—alienates his black friend, but acknowledges the humanity in his father’s murderer.

Alongside this irony, The Unvanquished left a powerful image of active non-violence in my head. Fortuitously enough, a day after finishing the novel, I watched Gran Torino. For those who haven’t seen Gran Torino, I will only say that Dirty Harry's film is sufficiently Faulknerian. Keep an eye out for two contrasting confessions at the end—one is perfunctorily delivered through a confessional screen to a pasty and persistent Catholic priest; and the other is passionately delivered through a screen door to his young and astute Hmong neighbor. These scenes in themselves capture the film’s close inspection of compassion, sacrifice, and endurance.

So perhaps my summer of crushing disappointment wasn’t so disappointing after all. Oh who am I kidding, of course it was.

Volume 11 of the Journal of Southern Religion

Art Remillard

While I'm not one for absolute truth claims, it is an objective truth that people get weird about college football (not me of course--other people). An example... While researching Florida State University's Indian mascot controversy, I noticed a problem with the logo. In 1838 during the Second Seminole War, Seminole leader Chief Osceola was captured and died soon after. An army doctor then removed his head and and embalmed it. The jar eventually found its way to the window of a St. Augustine drugstore, on display as a rather macabre trophy.

So it doesn't take an interpretive genius to notice that FSU's present logo looks like, well, a disembodied Indian head. In an effort to raise the issue, I wrote about this in a letter to the editor to a Tallahassee newspaper. On the morning that my letter was published, I was flooded with "FEAR THE SPEAR"-themed e-mails. Needless to say, this didn't expose me to the noblest qualities of the FSU fan base. But I couldn't help but notice that, for fans, the Seminole symbol is sacred territory. Accordingly, the debate between opponents of the mascot and FSU fans has become something of a "holy war on the football field." Opponents of the mascot often say that they want to protect the sacred symbols and history of Native Americans from stereotyping and exploitation. In contrast, for FSU fans, the Seminole sits at the center of their civil religious world of college football.

Others have identified a localized form of civil religion in college football. In the new volume of the Journal of Southern Religion (notice that I just transitioned from one form of self-promotion to another--beat that!), Eric Bain-Selbo's “From Lost Cause to Third-and-Long: College Football and the Civil Religion of the South,” traces the rise of college football in the South. He then presents and comments on three examples (each has an accompanying video) of game day rituals. Bain-Selbo concludes, "[Southern civil religion] has a history of courage, stubbornness, honor, and shame. It is the Lost Cause—sometimes racist, despicable, and divisive. For example, the playing of 'Dixie' and the chanting of 'The South will rise again' continues to be controversial and divisive among students, faculty, and fans at Ole Miss. At the same time, southern civil religion—emerging out of the Lost Cause but not restricted to it—provides a pride in southern identity that can be uplifting and uniting once stripped of its offensive (Confederate) trappings. And woven into this civil religion is college football, drawing from and adding to these elements and often holding them all together at once on beautiful autumn Saturdays in towns and cities all across the South."

Other highlights of the new volume include:

• An interview with Wayne Flynt, conducted by JSR editor Randall Stephens. As Stephens writes in his preface, “Wayne Flynt is the great contrarian of southern religious history. Whereas other scholars describe broad trends that mark the region—a white homogenous evangelicalism, parochialism, a regressive social outlook, etc—Flynt finds jack-leg socialist preachers, white liberal professors, and agrarians that certainly don't fit the mold.”
• A panel review of Erskine Clarke’s, Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic, done by Anne Blue Wills, Beth Barton Schweiger, and Kelly Baker. As Schweiger summarizes, “Erskine Clarke shows over and over how the same event—a visit, a death, a birth, a purchase of property, a church service, a trip to town—meant one thing for the slave and another for the master. . . . Clarke shows as no historian has done before that the history of American slavery should be written as a single narrative of ‘two histories of one place and one time.’”
• A panel review of Ed Blum’s, W.E.B. Du Bois: American Prophet, done by Sandy Dwayne Martin, Reiland Rabaka, and Alan Scot Willis. Blum also responds. The book and the panel (as well as various discussions on this blog!) indicate, as Blum writes, “that the days of ignoring Du Bois as a critical figure in American religious history may be over.”
• Randal L. Hall’s, “A Black Minister at the Nadir: The Poetry of Charles Roundtree Dinkins.” Before presenting some of Dinkins’s poems, Hall offers an insightful commentary. “Dinkins vividly diagnosed the problems of early Jim Crow America. Residing in the heart of a segregated society while explaining its rotten underbelly, he desperately tried to keep hold of both religion and poetry to pull him away from the depths of despair.”
• An author’s reflection essay by Charles Irons on his new book, The Origins of Proslavery Christianity. “My initial research question for The Origins of Proslavery Christianity,” Irons explains, “consisted of little more than a desire to understand how white southerners justified the enslavement of those with whom they professed spiritual brotherhood.”
• Curtis Evans and Fitzhugh Brundage continue a discussion started in Volume Ten on David Sehat’s article, "The Civilizing Mission of Booker T. Washington," Journal of Southern History 73 (May 2007), 323-62. “The recent exchanges between Curtis J. Evans and David Sehat about Booker T. Washington,” Brundage observes, “have been models of thoughtful and learned debate.”
• Book reviews of, Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg, eds. Jewish Roots in Southern Soil; Paul D. Sanders, Lyrics and Borrowed Tunes of the American Temperance Movement; David John Marley, Pat Robertson; Charles F. Irons, The Origins of Proslavery Christianity; Steve Goodson, Highbrows, Hillbillies, and Hellfire; Jason R. Young, Rituals of Resistance; Joe L. Coker, Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause; Barry Aron Vann, In Search of Ulster-Scots Land; Amy L. Koehlinger, The New Nuns; and a review essay by Kelly Baker on Anthea D. Butler, Women in the Church of God in Christ, and Laura R. Olson, Sue E. Crawford, and Melissa M. Deckman, Women with a Mission.

If I had to pick a favorite from this volume, I would choose the interview with Wayne Flynt. Make sure to check it out, along with the video clip, "The Gospel According to Wayne Flynt."