What do the Pope, Obama, and Johnny Rotten Have in Common?: Observations on Gender and the Antichrist

by Charity Carney

Thanks to Kelly Baker for suggesting a series on masculinity and religion during Paul's hiatus. Here's the first of my installment.

Americans’ fascination with the Antichrist has only grown over the past decade with an increasing number of pop culture references and politicized rhetoric surrounding the evil symbol of a coming Armageddon. Obama was/is accused by some as being the Antichrist—Obama beginning as relatively unknown politician who rose to power swiftly and won the hearts of many Americans with a message of hope. He made promises that were too good to be true, many said, and some accused him of acting like a messiah to lure unsuspecting Americans into his trap. (Google “Obama and Antichrist” if you haven’t before. It’s amazing what people can do with Photoshop.) The racialized overtones of this depiction of the president cannot be overlooked. Many Americans were terrified of Obama’s candidacy and election because he was an “other” in their worldview and so their fear blossomed into anger and denouncements of the “Yes We Can” Man as evil. Racist motivations aside, Antichrist accusations and personas have power (to scare, to motivate, and to actually empower) and much of that power resides in the masculine meme of the position.

White Women, Rape and the Power of Race in Virginia, 1900-1960 as well as cultural works on more recent America like Michelle Alexander’s thought-provoking new book, The New Jim Crow). But beyond the masculine world of racialized sexuality and crime there are other gendered factors that contribute to the current Antichrist discourse.

An alternative view of the Antichrist is that promoted by the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS). Current Republican presidential candidate contender Michelle Bachman once belonged to this group but recently demanded a written statement from the synod about a year ago asserting that she was no longer affiliated with them or their anti-Catholic beliefs. The WELS doctrine regarding the Antichrist states:

“Since Scripture teaches that the Antichrist would be revealed and gives the marks by which the Antichrist is to be recognized, and since this prophecy has been clearly fulfilled in the history and development of the Roman Papacy, it is Scripture which reveals that the Papacy is the Antichrist.”

The Pope is perhaps the most powerful religious figurehead alive in the Western world and by imbuing him with the religious authority of the Antichrist, the WELS has given him even more influence, although that is obviously not their intention (see http://www.theatlantic.com/ for the full story). The Pope and Catholics and many other Christians (including Lutherans) certainly do not view the Papal position as connected to the Antichrist, but the debate alone grants the Papacy more power because it is simply being debated. The Pope and the Catholic leadership, too, have a preponderance of masculine authority despite their sworn celibacy. The Church has maintained its commitment to male authority since its founding and continues to rely on an all-male cast of Pope, Cardinals, and priests, etc., giving nuns duties that reflect a more maternal role (teaching and nursing, for instance). The Pope, I contend, would not be accused of being the Antichrist if it was not necessarily a male occupation and if the Catholic Church did not imbue it with masculine power.

And it is here where I will play “devil’s advocate” (pun, sadly enough, intended): Antichrist imagery can also be used as a hyper-masculine badge of honor. Take, for example, the role that Antichrist played in the punk music scene of the 1970s. The Sex Pistols’ lead singer, Johnny Rotten, even went so far as to declare himself an antichrist in “Anarchy in the UK”:

“I am an anti-christ

I am an anarchist

Don't know what I want but

I know how to get it

I wanna destroy the passerby caus’ I

I wanna BE anarchy!”

The Sex Pistols might have been Nietzsche’s favorite band. In The Antichrist, the nihilist wrote: “What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.” Ultimately, the concept of an Antichrist is a positive one to Nietzsche because it empowers man to challenge a blundering God whom impedes science and knowledge. Although Nietzsche is not speaking directly of the biblical Antichrist, he is pressing the notion that anti-Christian, anti-God, anti-religious views are what give men control and intellect. The Antichrist may be the supremely masculine symbol—with power and virility and ferocity representing his most cited characteristics.

The dangers of this discourse, however, are immense. As seen with Obama, declaring a public personality to be the Antichrist only engages widespread animosity and fear, which, when combined, can lead to vehement and violent reactions. So maybe the WELS should reconsider its charged doctrine concerning the Pope as well as those who have labeled the president as the Antichrist.

What Catholic Reform Looks Like

Paul Harvey

Recently we put up a guest post from Julie Ingersoll reviewing Colleen McDannell's new work The Spirit of Vatican II: A History of Catholic Reform in America. This work, part family memoir and part religious history, was recently published by Basic Books.

There's a nice interview with Colleen about the book, up now here. Below, a little excerpt, which I hope will interest you in reading the rest:

The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) was perhaps the most important event in twentieth-century religious history. While there are many fine books about Vatican II, they focus either on the session debates or on the ideas contained in the Council documents. What I wondered about was how Vatican II influenced the lives of average American Catholics. What was parish life like before and after the Council? Did Vatican II really change anything?

It really is impossible to speak of “the American Catholic,” because of the ethnic, class, and regional differences. So, I decided to use my mother as the narrative thread to look at how certain Catholics negotiated the changes of the past century. I wanted to shift the discussion to girls, women, nuns, and parish life because the sex abuse scandals had yet again reduced Catholicism to a story of boys, men, priests, and bishops. I also thought that it was about time that religious historians take seriously mobile, middle-class life in the suburbs, especially in the western United States.

Catholic Looks at American Culture in the Antebellum Era and the Mid-Twentieth Century: Two New Books

Paul Harvey Just a brief note on two new books that will be of interest to some readers here, both important pieces of scholarship on the Catholic relationship with American politics and culture. First, a review from Choice, just below, on Catholics and slavery: Wallace, W. Jason. Catholics, slaveholders, and the dilemma of American evangelicalism, 1835-1860. Notre Dame, 2010. 200p index afp ISBN 026804421x pbk, $30.00; ISBN9780268044213 pbk, $30.00. Reviewed in 2011jul CHOICE.

Over the past 40 years, scholars have produced a cornucopia of quality scholarship detailing the importance of religion in the antebellum era and how particular religious ideas shaped competing visions of the American Republic, creating the context for and animating the Civil War. Wallace's fine volume elucidates the challenge Catholicism brought to that discourse. Its traditional theology challenged the individualism in the hermeneutics of northern and southern Protestants. Increasing German and Irish Catholic immigration threatened the English domination of the US. In five crisp chapters, Wallace (history, Samford Univ.) outlines how Catholicism debated the hegemonic discourse of Protestant-based acquisitive capitalism, articulated a traditional accommodation to slavery as a product of human sin, and asserted its own historic and ongoing contribution to the discussion of social morality and the proper sources of the Christian life. In their attempts to explain, Catholic leaders offered a powerful critique of nationalism and religion rooted solely in the authority of individual believers under the Constitution and Scripture, an intellectual impeachment given credence by the outbreak of Civil War. Catholicism offered an alternative vision rooted in tradition, realism, and theology. Summing Up:Recommended. All levels/libraries. -- E. R. Crowther, Adams State College Next up, a book just received which appears to be a landmark study: Anthony Burke Smith, The Look of Catholics: Portrayals in Popular Culture from the Great Depression to the Cold War, hot off the press from the University Press of Kansas. I've only had the chance to skim through parts, but it looks fascinating, and later this summer Emily will give us a more substantive discussion of the book up here. A brief bit from the book's webpage:

For much of American history, Catholics’ perceived allegiance to an international church centered in Rome excluded them from full membership in society. Now Anthony Burke Smith shows how the intersection of the mass media and the visually rich culture of Catholicism changed that Protestant perception and, in the process, changed American culture.

Smith examines depictions of and by Catholics in American popular culture during the critical period between the Great Depression and the height of the Cold War. He surveys the popular films, television, and photojournalism of the era that reimagined Catholicism as an important, even attractive, element of American life to reveal the deeply political and social meanings of the Catholic presence in popular culture.

Smith shows that Hollywood played a big part in this midcentury Catholicization of the American imagination. Leo McCarey’s Oscar-winning film Going My Way, starring the soothing (and Catholic) Bing Crosby, turned the Catholic parish into a vehicle for American dreams, while Pat O’Brien and Spencer Tracy portrayed heroic priests who championed the underclass in some of the era’s biggest hits. And even while a filmmaker like John Ford rarely focused on clerics and the Church, Smith reveals how his films gave a distinctly ethnic Catholic accent to his cinematic depictions of American community.

Smith also looks at the efforts of Henry Luce’s influential Life magazine to harness Catholicism to a postwar vision of middle-class prosperity and cultural consensus. And he considers the unexpected success of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s prime-time television show Life is Worth Living in the 1950s, which offered a Catholic message that spoke to the anxieties of Cold War audiences.

Revealing images of orthodox belief whose sharpest edges had been softened to suggest tolerance and goodwill, Smith shows how such representations overturned stereotypes of Catholics as un-American. Spanning a time when hot and cold wars challenged Americans’ traditional assumptions about national identity and purpose, his book conveys the visual style, moral confidence, and international character of Catholicism that gave it the cultural authority to represent America.

In short, the book appears to be a cultural history accompaniment to Kevin Schultz's Tri-Faith America, reviewed at the blog here previously by Chris Beneke. The book features extensive discussions of Catholic representations in the movies, going far beyond the usual "Legion of Decency" emphasis that most books about Catholics and the movies cover. There are also chapters on Catholics in Life magazine, on Fulton Sheen and Catholics in television, and on "John Ford's Irish American Century."

Only St. Jude Can Prevent Forest Fires

Emily Clark

This morning in Tallahassee was wonderfully pleasant in temperature due to storms passing through the area last night. However, the air quality was horrible, as smoke from nearby wildfires covered the city in a smelly haze. The Florida Division of Forestry has deemed wildfires an area hot topic, and a big part of the problem is a drought. Raised in south Texas, I view droughts not as occasional; they’re the normal environmental state of being. But isn’t Florida supposed to get enough rain? I mean, the Everglades and swamps are here. And Florida isn't the only state in a drought. The majority of Texas has been in a severe drought for months, with many places ranking at the highest severity level (exceptional).

When in need of rain, what can mere humans do? Apparently, pray. Just two months ago in April, Texas governor Rick Perry declared “the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas,” and “Texans of all faiths and traditions” were “to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal way of life.” Crop failure and wildfires are plaguing the state, and since (according to Perry) “Texans have been strengthened, assured and lifted up through prayer,” it only made sense to pray for rain. In the wake of a hopeless exceptional-ranking drought, prayer would be the answer. Move over Smokey Bear, enter St. Jude.


Perhaps it’s fitting that today I read Robert Orsi’s Thank You St. Jude: Women’s Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes as I prepare to take my doctoral comprehensive exams this December. I may not have been in Indy for the RAAC that I have so jealously read reports on from fellow bloggers, but Orsi has been on my mind too. If you haven’t read Thank You St. Jude, I highly recommend it. Personally, I like it better than Madonna of 115^th Street. In it, Orsi investigates the devotional worlds of women who have called upon St. Jude. In doing so, Catholic women (“the immigrants’ daughters”) have appropriated the saint, and Orsi explores how they use their devotions to regain their voices and how their appeals to Jude can also push them further into their state of hopeless despair. In analyzing the functions, results, and workings of the women’s devotions, Orsi in the end embraces the ambivalence of it all. Jude and the women who ask for his intercession live in unstable and “in-between” worlds. The questions of bracketing belief and passing judgments that seem to have come up again at this June’s RAAC (and reminiscent of the famous “Orsi-Prothero Smack-down” in the HDB) permeate the pages of Thank You St. Jude as well. When he laments how a woman asked Jude to keep her husband faithful instead of confronting the husband, is Orsi passing judgment on the oppressive nature of this woman’s devotion or he is simply embracing the “in-between ground” he endorses in Between Heaven and Earth? Truly, the intersubjectivity beloved by anthropologist Michael Jackson remains a blurry area hard to define when deployed in religious studies and American religious history – though it is a task and goal that I love and applaud Orsi and others for engaging.

After finishing Thank You St. Jude, I visited the website for the National Shrine of St. Jude in Chicago that begins Orsi’s narrative, and the shrine is in need of help. In his book, Orsi argues that Jude needs the devotion and sustenance of the women who call on him, just as the women who ask for his help need him. Both the women and Jude inhabit a space of vulnerability – the women at the edge of hopeless despair and Jude the long-forgotten saint who could slip back into obscurity. It seems Jude needs help more than ever right now. Upon opening the shrine’s website, one immediately learns that the shrine is $60,000 under budget and is in need of donations. The shrine is once again selling the healing St. Jude's oil, a product that was not available when Orsi was writing. Another possible way to donate is to electronically purchase a “virtual prayer candle,” which comes complete with a 3, 9, or 30 day novena. Though I am an immigrants’ great-great-granddaughter of German and Czech Catholic heritage, I haven’t purchased one yet. But, perhaps come late fall with a hopelessly large pile of comps reading still to tackle, I might take Jude up on that offer.

Richard Bushman, Robert Orsi, and Mormonism's "Abundant History"

Christopher Jones

(cross-posted at Juvenile Instructor)

Over at the website for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, the editors have posted a discussion (moderated by Susanna Morrill, associate professor of religious studies at Lewis and Clark College) between noted historians and scholars of religion Richard Lyman Bushman and Robert Orsi. Bushman and Orsi reflect on the potential Orsi's approach to "supernatural presence" and "abundant events" in modern Catholicism holds for scholars of Mormonism.

The conversation between these two seasoned scholars, which touches on the relationship between the scholar and her subjects, how to make sense of revelatory visions and the writing of the Book of Mormon, and the vocabulary used to describe such occurrences, deserves to be read in its entirety, but I'm including a brief excerpt below:

Richard: You also speak of the routes of influence radiating from such events. That’s a nice way of putting it; the word “routes” suggests an approach to what happens in consequence. Where do the abundant events lead? But it occurs to me that some of the responses of the Marian groups, which taken together could be thought of as a morphology of an abundant event, take a different form in the case of Joseph Smith. Rather than the abundant event dissolving the boundaries of subjectivity and establishing intimacies, in Joseph Smith’s case it leads to structure and organization. The people who are converted take on priesthood offices and go on missions; they have council meetings. As the influence radiates still further, you get minutes of the meetings and letters and all the paraphernalia of organization. I thought it would be interesting to talk about how events that are so similar at the core lead in different directions in the aftermath.

Robert: I appreciate the difference. I was thinking about that concept as I read the very powerful final chapter of Rough Stone Rolling, in which the people left behind at Nauvoo after Joseph’s murder continued to work on building the temple, though they knew they weren’t going to be using it after it was done because they would be leaving Nauvoo. It seemed to me that we needed some word to get at what happens between Max Weber’s idea of initial charismatic leadership of a new religion and its eventual institutionalization. It seems as if something else is going on there, almost as if the stones themselves were charismatic–the stones of this sacred building that would otherwise signify the routinization of Mormonism. So I take your point. It does lead in different directions, which might have to do with the specific peculiarities of modern Catholicism and modern Mormonism. I was struck by–as you want to put it–the radiation outwards of Joseph’s spirit and his vision through the organization.

Go here to read the rest of the interview.

Women, Vatican II, and the Remaking of American Catholicism

I'm very happy today to post this guest contribution from Julie Ingersoll, well known for her contributions to Religion Dispatches, where lately she's been following the doings of Christian Reconstructionists and Tea Party Patriots (and the connection between the two). Julie is the author of Evangelical Christian Women: War Stories in the Gender Battles, and is currently writing a book on Christian Reconstructionism.

But today's post is about something very different. Below, Julie gives some thoughts on Colleen McDannell's new book The Spirit of Vatican II: A History of Catholic Reform in America. Colleen will be well known to many blog readers here for previous works such as Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America, and Picturing Faith: Photography and the Great Depression. Colleen's new book is both an academic as well as a very personal reflection on the role of Vatican II in the lives of American Catholics. Also, for some other reflections on the book (and interviews with the author), see here, here, and (from the Salt Lake Tribune paper) here. A bit down the road on the blog, our contributor Kathleen Sprows Cummings will give us her thoughts on the book as well, but for now, thanks to Julie for these reflections.
_______________________________________________________

Women, Vatican II and the remaking of American Catholicism

by Julie Ingersoll

“Where are the people?”

That’s the question historian Colleen McDannell always asks. In her new book, The Spirit of Vatican II: A History of Catholic Reform in America, (Basic Books, 2011) she gives us a distinctly new view of those reforms to America’s largest denomination. Part institutional history, part social history, part family memoir—and in places strikingly funny-- McDannell’s story has a very special person at its center: her mom, Margaret.

Instead of a traditional “church history” that explores the history of doctrine and the conflicts and negotiations among church leaders --all of them male—McDannell traces the impact of Vatican II on the people in the pews. This shift in focus gives us a glimpse into the religious lives of laypeople, especially women.

McDannell begins with the daily life of Catholics under Vatican I with Margaret’s immigrant grandmother who came to the U.S. in the late 1800s. Margaret herself grew up during the rise of the parochial school system intended to keep Catholic children separated from Protestantism. The practice of Catholicism was formal and stiff; ordained men were in charge and laypeople rarely questioned them. The Mass was said on behalf of the people, in Latin, by a priest with his back to the congregation.

Women’s roles were so limited they were even prohibited from participation in the choir that sang during mass. Of course, no women were part of the Vatican Council’s deliberations (toward the end some women were permitted to listen). McDannell writes:

None of the reporters who covered the opening of the Council noted the irony of the crowd of over two thousand men dressed in lace and silk solemnly striding into St. Peter’s on the feast day of the Maternity of the Virgin Mary without being accompanied by a single woman.

Vatican II brought an emphasis on lay leadership; the priest now faces the congregation; the Mass, in the US, is said in English. Women serve as lay leaders and the roles permitted to lay leaders, whether male or female, are greatly expanded. Traditional hymns are now often replaced with contemporary music and church architecture represents these changes materially.

With this shift in authority toward laypeople, Vatican II empowered women and created in them a sense of the significance of their own voices in terms of parish life, religious practice, and even political issues. While remaining conservative, Margaret’s views on issues like the anti war movement and the civil rights movement were tempered by her church life. Catholics came to see themselves, as McDannell describes them, as “deciding people” even on official church positions on issues such as birth control:

“As father Bill was finishing up Mass with a list of announcements, he looked out at his uncomfortable flock. “Well…regarding…and then came a pause and a big smile; “Big Daddy says no!”

Nancy (one of McDannells’ interviewees) never forgot the moment. “The place roared and everyone clapped and laughed,” she reported. Pope John Paul VI had just announced that artificial birth control would remain off limits. “that was the sign of the times,” Nancy observed, that so few at St. Jude’s took the pontiff’s conclusion seriously that day.”

This is a great book on the impact of Vatican II in the daily lives of American Catholics’ as well as changes in the Catholic influence on American culture and politics (there’s so much more than what I can include here).

McDannell also raises important questions about what counts as “religion.” We often privilege the ideas of leaders without even realizing that those make up the religion of only a few. And religious leaders are all too happy for us to consider them the sole authorities on what counts in their traditions. But, in de-centering religion to examine the cultures, practices and material dimensions, McDannell gives a much more complete picture—a picture that includes real life Catholicism.

Judeo-Catholic-Protestant America

Chris Beneke

Kevin Schultz’s Tri-Faith America begins with the story of a priest, a rabbi and two Protestant ministers. It might be the first line of a joke, but it's deadly serious. The four chaplains were aboard the U.S.S. Dorchester when it was sunk by a German torpedo in February 1943. They all went down with the ship, prayerfully, arm-in-arm after having given their life jackets to sailors who lacked them.

The sacrifice of the Four Chaplains represented something of a landmark in the history of American religious comity. These men were "celebrated ... as emblems of the new tri-faith nation." Yet, as Schultz shows, Americans were already prepared to appreciate the larger significance of their heroism because of the ecumenical groundwork that had been laid over the previous decade by the anti-prejudice proselytizing of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ), which confronted a revitalized Ku Klux Klan and a swelling, virulent strain of Western antisemitism in the 1920s and 30s.

Schultz's assiduous research demonstrates that the NCCJ wasn'tmerely engaged in a half-ass exercise of holier-than-thou idealism. During WWII alone, the organization sponsored traveling "tolerance trios"--consisting of a rotating roster of priests, rabbis, and Protestant ministers--who visited nearly 800 military installations and addressed 9 million Americans. This was missionary work on a par with the massive evangelizing and Bible distribution efforts undertaken by American Protestants during the Civil War.

In the early postwar period, such everyday features of American culture as films, manners, and educational programming were shaped by the tri-faith model that the NCCJ had so carefully cultivated. Postwar liberalism was in turn infused with the mostly tolerant and religiously derived moral imperative that went by the name of the "Judeo-Christian tradition."

Upon this somewhat narrow foundation, postwar Americans would adopt broader conceptions of tolerance that included a larger range of religious groups. Religious bigotry and discrimination certainly didn't disappear, but they were largely driven from public life by the early 1960s. Though groups such as the NCCJ proved slow to promote civil rights for African Americans, the trope of inclusion that they popularized resonated throughout the 1960s. Meanwhile, before the Judeo-Christian tradition was appropriated by the Religious Right in the 1970s, it was employed by Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders to discredit racist institutions and policies in the 1950s and 60s.

There were deep, intangible costs accompanying the triumph of the tri-faith ideal, which Schultz details. Among them was the loss of communal identity by Jews, Catholics, and Protestants. Also endangered were some of the vibrant, distinctive traditions within each of these larger faith categories. Prophecy withered as ecumenism bloomed.

Still, Schultz provides us with an unapologetically progressive account. He makes clear how profoundly important religious differences were to early twentieth-century Americans and how tirelessly some worked to transcend, or at least mediate, them. Tri-Faith America gives religious tolerance its due as a crucial component of postwar liberalism. In this, it represents a sharp rebuke to the fashionable idea that American religious freedom and religious tolerance have been little more than subtle exercises in coercion

Barack Obama and Óscar Romero

By Christopher Jones

Just over a week ago, I returned from a restful and relaxing vacation in El Salvador, where I enjoyed the beach, fantastic food, stress-free post-comps reading (in a hammock, no less), and spending time with family. I also spent a day in Santiago de María, a relatively small town located in the mountains of Usulután where my mother-in-law grew up (and where some of her family still lives). Among my favorite things in Santiago de María is driving down Ave. Monseñor Óscar Arnulfo Romero, named after the martyred Catholic archbishop whose assassination at the hands of U.S.-backed death squads in 1980 helped trigger the outbreak of the Salvadoran Civil War (Romero's brief stint at Bishop of the Diocese of Santiago de María immediately preceded his advancement to Archbishop of El Salvador). I noticed this time that the mural of Romero downtown had been touched up since my last visit there, with a note indicating that it had been done as part of last year's commemoration of the 30th anniversary of Romero's death.

My visit to El Salvador came almost exactly one month after President Barack Obama's visit to Central America's smallest country--a trip that included a much-heralded stop at the tomb of the deceased Archbishop. In large part because of the events in Lybia and elsewhere turned Americans' attention elsewhere, Obama's trip to El Salvador and Romero's tomb received little attention from pundits and commentators--an unfortunate oversight for those interested in the intersections of religion and politics on the international stage. I've been able to track down two insightful pieces reflecting on the significance of the event. The first, authored by Greg Grandin and published at The Nation, uses the opportunity to decry the immorality of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, concluding by offering his hope that

Obama finds inspiration in Oscar Romero’s life: Romero, after all, started his public career as a cautious moderate who believed he could quietly work with El Salvador’s ruling class to coax needed reform. The reality of Salvadoran society forced his conversion into an outspoken, confrontational leader who directly attacked those who perpetuated what he called “structural sin:” “When the church hears the cry of the oppressed,” Romero wrote before his murder, “it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises.” If Romero was alive today, he would recognize CAFTA’s Chapter 10, along with the broader, disastrous policies Washington is pursuing in the Mexico-Central America-Colombia security corridor, as prime examples of “structural sin.”

The second article, posted at Religion Dispatches by Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado, who speculates on the potential affect Obama's visit might have on Romero's candidacy for beatification, but who ultimately sees "Obama’s visit as symbolic of a shift in US attitudes toward Central America":

Gone I hope is the era of intervention and manipulation. The Central America of today is different from the one that saw Romero’s blood shed while saying mass. Some would argue that the crisis of gangs and drugs that is engulfing this region is leading to a crisis that will eclipse the civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s. And yet in spite of the growing violence, figures like Romero give us hope.

As Romero prophetically stated, “I should tell you that, as a Christian, I don’t believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will be resurrected in the Salvadoran people.” The Salvadoran people today, the Catholic Church as a whole, and all who stand as defenders of human rights and denounce injustice should take after Obama and spend a moment remembering this modern-day martyr who did not die in vain but whose dangerous memory continues to empower and inspire us today.

While both of these scholars know much more about Latin American politics and religion than I, their reflections only scratch the surface of this all, and questions regarding the significance of Obama's visit to Romero's tomb remain. (Among the least-significant but most-perplexing is how on earth right-wing pundits did not jump on this opportunity to smear Obama by linking him anew to liberation theology). We're left to wonder with Maldonado if Obama's visit may in fact play any part in Romero's potential beatification (and the contested politics of memory and memorialization more broadly). And what, if anything, does Obama's visit reveal about his own Christianity? Perhaps most significantly, what does all of this mean to the Salvadoran people (including the million-plus Salvadoran immigrants in the U.S.)--those to whom Romero devoted his own ministry?

Tri-Faith America

Paul Harvey

Very happy to announce that blog friend and occasional guest contributor Kevin Schultz's book is now out, with Oxford Univ. Press: Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise. A bit down the road we'll have a fuller exposition on the book and also an interview with the author; in the meantime, Kevin has a very short summary of some of his points, in "The Return of 'Christian America,'" up at the Huffington Post.

For a more substantively lengthy discussion of the material in his book, though, I would recommend also Kevin's article in the Journal of American History: "Religion as Identity in Postwar America: The Story of the Last SErious Attempt to Put a Question on Religion in the U.S. Census," Journal of American History(September 2006): 359-84. And, as blog readers may remember, Kevin and I had an article surveying the "state of the field" of American religious history, in last year's Journal of the American Academy of Religion, which I blogged about here. In the meantime, Kevin's short piece on "The Return of 'Christian America'" looks at the history of that idea, and in particular the ways Jews and Catholics interacted with that idea in the course of inserting themselves into the postwar tri-faith America.

Pluralism and Education: Testing the Limits of Liberal Democracy

Paul Harvey

My apologies to blog readers for being relatively absent here. Finishing up two big writing projects here is keeping me busy 24/7, and will continue doing so until next week. Fortunately, no one to date has yet noticed my absence since Kelly and the other contributors have filled up the page with great posts. Following all of Kelly's gender history and historians series should keep you busy for a while anyway. We've got much on the plate coming up -- some new contributors, a blog interview with Darren Dochuk, and, but wait, there's much, much more!

I wasn't even able to post anything about the many sessions at the Organization of American Historians meeting in Houston two weeks ago, primarily because I was stuck nearly the entire time there in lengthy committee meetings. Fortunately, History News Network followed the conference. I want to recommend especially the Day 2 Report from the OAH, which features a lengthy description of a session entitled "Pluralism and Education: Testing the Limits of Liberal Democracy." The session featured blog friend Kevin Schultz and others exploring the topic. Here's an excerpt from the description at HNN:

Remalian Cocar, a PhD student at Emory University, presented a paper on “released time,” the first paper of its kind since Jonathan Zimmerman wrote a chapter on the subject (“I think maybe five people read it,” he joked). Released time refers to a once-common practice of releasing students from school into the care of local religious organizations. It was voluntary but there was a hidden element of coercion in the practice, especially in smaller and more homogenous communities. Released time started as a Protestant program at the beginning of the twentieth century, but Catholics and to a much lesser extent Jews participated. In fact, Catholics outnumbered Protestants in release time programs in public schools in Chicago by the 1920s and in New York by the 1940s.

In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled released time a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments in McCollum v. Board of Education, but the Court partially reversed itself in 1952 inZorach v. Clauson, which held that schools could release students for religious instruction provided that the sessions took place off of school property.

Corcar made emphasized that, at least initially, released time was a mainline Protestant practice, but one which was adopted by Catholics and later by evangelicals. For the former, it allowed an inroad into an overwhelmingly Protestant public school system (it was for this reason, Corcar reminded his audience, that Catholics wanted their own parochial schools). But both Catholic and mainline Protestant organizations mainly stuck to either religious or progressive social lesions, whereas by the 1980s evangelical groups were teaching biblical creationism, a matter foreseen by Felix Frankfurter, the author of the McCollum decision, when he predicted evangelicals would roast him over the fire.But how will evangelicals react, Corcar wondered, if and when other religions, specifically Muslims, requested their released time?

Kevin Schultz, who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago, then discussed the critique of secularism expounded by William F. Buckley, deeply rooted in Catholic critiques of Protestant domination of education but utilized by both Catholics and Protestants. Both groups argued (and continue to argue) that a secular education provides an incomplete education, as it omits the importance of God, religion, and tradition in a child’s upbringing.

Earlier remarks had been made by Claremont McKenna’s Diana Selig, who analyzed the successes and failures of the Springfield model of liberal education. Springfield, MA, hosted a comprehensive liberal education program, sparked by national interest in intercultural education and implemented by progressive Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish leaders, along with faculty from Columbia’s Teachers College; ">It was not a unique program in its broad contours, but differed from others in its systemic, as opposed to superficial, prescriptions. Curriculum committees were set up with input from teachers, principals, the community, and students. This entailed interaction between entire black and white families, and, less remarkably, similar religious exchanges.

The program, however, was not a panacea—it was implemented in a city with a very small black population, and a few black teachers and students were unthreatening to white residents and the white power structure. As the town became increasingly diverse, the Springfield model began to fracture.

Jonathan Zimmerman made a few broad remarks at the end, raising questions about how much critical thinking, centered around the notion of critique, took place as a result of the Springfield project (were there some claims, like the inherent equality of the races, that progressive educators left uncontested?) and wondered if released time was at heart a pluralist impulse rooted in the needs of the various Protestant and Catholic religious communities. On the other hand, John Dewey was a fierce critic of released time because he felt it undermined democracy. One wonders, said Zimmerman, what he’d say about the heavy evangelical presence in released time today.

Stick Your Beer in the Snow: The Theology of the Frozen Tundra

Paul Harvey

I wasn't going to clutter this blog with exultation in the victory of the only Socialist/Communitarian Franchise in professional sports, the Green Bay Packers (whom I have loved since the 1967 Ice Bowl, my young Baptist self not realizing then that Vince Lombardi -- subject of a recent Broadway show -- was a Jesuit-trained coach at Fordham before being brought in to rescue the hapless Packers), but I have to quote just one gem from this piece of seasonal theology, from someone interviewed at the team's victory celebration at Lambeau Field today, where below-zero wind chills. hardly deterred the faithful:

The weather's fine. I can barely feel it," Ken Hampp, 23, of Appleton, said in the Lambeau parking lot as he sipped a Budweiser, before it froze. "That's my favorite thing about winter. You can just stick your beer in the snow.

Word.

Oh, and congratulations to the biggest Cheesehead friend of this blog, Kip Kosek, author of the memorable article "Brett Favre, Catholic Hero" (from 2008, in case you are wondering, before the more recent ugly Favre revelations). Actually the final sentences of the piece are even more appropriate given those revelations: "For every choice, there's a consequence. Wisconsin's Catholics understand this, and weep."

A Guide to Boston's Religiously Significant Sites

Paul Harvey

Wish I had seen this before, rather than after, the AHA, but going to post because it might help fill out some of your itineraries (including my own) on trips to Boston:

Meaghan Dwyer-Ryan, A Guide to Boston's Religiously Significant Sites, from the published supplement to the just-concluded AHA meeting in Boston. The author includes short descriptions and histories not only of the usual suspects (Old North Church, etc.), but also to major Catholic and Jewish congregational destinations. Put this one in your bookmarks.

Here's one I didn't know about, just for a little taste:

German and Polish immigrants established Congregation Ohabei Shalom, Boston’s first Jewish congregation, in 1842 in the South End, and the first Jewish cemetery in East Boston in 1849. In 1852, the congregation constructed a synagogue on Warren Street, modeled after Newport’s Touro Synagogue. Increasing membership prompted further moves: in 1863, to the Warrenton Street Universalist Church (now the Charles Playhouse) and in 1886, to the Union Park Street Church (now a Greek Orthodox Church) in the South End. In 1928, the congregation built its current temple center on Beacon Street in Brookline (1187 Beacon St., 617-277-6610).

Beyond the Protestant Nation: Religion and the Narrative of American History

Paul Harvey

We hadn't yet posted notes on the Saturday and (dreaded) Sunday morning sessions at the AHA in Boston, more on that forthcoming. But we definitely want to highlight one session of huge significance, which unfortunately got stuck in the no-man's-land of the Sunday morning (Jan. 9) at 8:30 a.m. slot at the AHA. Despite the unfortunate time placement, the panel "Beyond the Protestant Nation" ought to be one of the most interesting of the whole conference, and certainly of great interest for American religious history/studies scholars. I'm pasting in the abstract below, with the following note from panel organizer Chris Cantwell of Cornell University:

"The round table grew out of a conversation Orsi and I repeatedly return to, where it seems that scholars who work on Protestants are able to make far bigger claims about American history than historians who work on other religious traditions. The protestant work ethic, for example, tells us about the foundations of America's capitalist ethos. Catholic street feste, however, tell us about immigrants; not about America. Out of this conversation Bob and I put together a round table that features scholars who do not work on traditionally defined Protestantism to ask how would the American historical narrative change if we gave the questions and concerns of non-Protestant religions the same interpretive strength as Protestantism receives."

Here's the abstract:

Beyond the Protestant Nation: Religion and the Narrative of American History

American historians, like their counterparts in other fields of historical inquiry, have become increasingly interested in integrating religion into our historical narratives. Prominent religious figures now appear in survey courses; we see theological ideas contributing to the formation of political philosophies and programs; and we use popular ritual practices to convey the culture of an era. But in studying the most religiously diverse country in the world historians have implicitly perpetuated an interpretive hierarchy of American religious life that inflates the illuminating power of certain religious communities and circumscribes or even ignores the historical (and historiographical) contributions of others. For instance, exploring the contours of the Protestant work ethic or evangelical conceptions of the state tell us, scholars argue, about the foundation of America’s capitalist ethos or our core political values. Catholic street feste to particular saints or changes within Reformed Judaism, however, are about urban culture or the immigrant experience—about Catholics and Jews, not about “America.”

This roundtable seeks to bring the deeply rooted Protestant and religious presuppositions of American historiography to light to challenge its assertions. Historians who insist on the historical primacy of Protestantism (singular) are not describing the past; they are implicitly reproducing a particular nationalist ideology that has long equated the identity and wellbeing of the United States with “Protestantism.” “Protestant,” moreover, entails assumptions about the kind of religiosity that has been consequential in American history. Embedded in the enduring and unchallenged identification of America as “Protestant” is an implicit argument about religion and modernity that endorses specific ways of being religious. Jewish orthodoxy, Mormon revelation, Catholic devotionalism, spiritualist meetings, Pentecostal tongue speaking, and other ways of being religious are excluded or defined as historically marginal.

This roundtable proposes to invert this interpretative hierarchy to ask how the American historical narrative change if the historiographical questions and concerns of non-Protestant religious groups were given national significance. What questions would rise in importance? What questions would decline? How would our periodizations change? In short, the round table seeks to ask what it would mean to re-imagine the American historical narrative from a more robustly plural religious perspective—not to include other religious idioms in our stories, but to rethink the narrative itself from a post-“Protestant” perspective? The round table convenes a number of scholars who work on religious traditions other than “Protestant” to explore this question of a post-Protestant historiography. Lila Berman considers the consequences of Protestant paradigms in Jewish studies, where authors have contorted Jewish beliefs to underline their seamlessness with America’s “Protestant” values. Wallace Best argues that assumptions about the Protestant nature of African-American religiosity have obscured the spiritual beliefs of admittedly secular and non-believing black activists. Robert Orsi suggests that the way Catholics have been “American” demands revisions of the idea of a singular American modern. Catherine Albanese asserts that though loosely organized and poorly defined, metaphysical religiosities have been a potent “third force” in American history that has inflected and shaped much of what we see as purely mainline and evangelical Protestantism. Richard Bushman highlights the distinctive perspectives Mormons brought to many phases of American history and how these have engaged and shaped the contours of the nation.

Though each participant brings a particular insight to the panel, the roundtable hopes to put these perspectives in conversation with the audience to explore the possibilities of a post-Protestant historiography as a field.

Reno vs. Orsi on Catholic Studies in the University

By John Fea

Part of this post is cross-posted at The Way of Improvement Leads Home.

Recently Robert Orsi, the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies at Northwestern University, made the following statement in an online forum at Immanent Frame:

The deep hostility of the church for the modern world and its dreadful consequences are abundantly evident in the still unfolding child sexual abuse crisis in the global church. Priests and prelates systematically lied to legal authorities, deceived congregations, crudely intimidated parents and children, and duped medical professionals, in order to cover up crimes and protect the church. The papacies of John Paul II and Benedict are implicated, not least by protecting and honoring such egregious figures as Bernard Law and Marcial Maciel. The legal documents published by bishop-accountability.org reveal a deep contempt among church leaders for the institutional transparency and legal accountability that are seen as goods in modern political theory, for modern journalism and psychology, as well as a great fear of the laity (which is to say of the world beyond church walls). Read through these files and you will wonder what the Second Vatican Council, the church’s most explicit engagement with modernity, actually accomplished.

The various goods of modernity were hard won; the language of multiple modernities obscures the fact that Catholicism was one of the major obstacles to their achievement. This is not to absolve the modern of its horrors or to deny that sometimes Catholics stood in courageous and necessary opposition to it (although the church itself mostly did so for its own ends, otherwise it was quite willing to come to terms with even the vilest moderns). It is to call into question the positive valence of the phrase “multiple modernities,” to question the history it elides, and to recognize the brave opposition of secular modernity to Catholicism, which has been on balance a great good.

R.R. Reno, a writer at First Things and a professor of theological ethics at Creighton University, is "shocked" by these comments.  He not only thinks that Orsi's remarks are inaccurate, but he wonders how a person making these kinds of remarks can legitimately hold a chair in Catholic Studies.

Reno writes:

I’m in favor of academic freedom. Robert Orsi is entitled to his opinions, however foolish. And Northwestern is entitled to employ him. But a Catholic chair?

This is not a matter of mere titles. At Northwestern Orsi runs a Catholic Studies program.

The Catholic Church does not own the word “catholic,” but surely she has a legitimate interest in its use, especially by institutions and professors who seem altogether indifferent to—correction: profoundly antagonistic to—her teachings.
I’m sure Cardinal George in Chicago is not indifferent, and I certainly hope he can bring the administrators at Northwestern to see the lack of integrity involved in the false advertising of calling Orsi’s chair a Catholic chair. And if not the administrators, then at least the donors.

This raises an interesting question.  Does a scholar who holds an endowed chair in Catholic Studies need to be a Catholic or promote the beliefs and causes of the Catholic Church?

I have never quite understood the nature of a so-called "Catholic Studies" program at a secular university.  Northwestern offers a minor in Catholic Studies that seems to treat its subject matter in a rather detached, academic way:

Roman Catholic ways of thinking, living, and organizing the world have been fundamental to the making of the world’s cultures since the fifth century of the Common Era and remain important around the globe today. The Catholic Studies minor offers the opportunity to interpret the civilizations and cultures of the world through interdisciplinary approaches to Catholicism.  Students apply the critical tools of contemporary academic research and conversation to the study of the engagement of Catholics and Catholicism with the realities of their worlds.

Based on this description, it would seem that the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies at Northwestern could be held by anyone who studies Catholicism from a critical perspective, whether that person is Catholic or not.

An interesting comparison might be the Catholic Studies program at the University of Illinois-Chicago. This program, according to its website, was founded in conjunction with the University's Catholic Chaplaincy and the Archdiocese of Chicago.  The front page of the website has links to the college Newman Center, the Archdiocese of Chicago, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Vatican, the Catholic News Service, Commonweal, and America.  All of this suggests that the Catholic Studies program at UIC is an academic program that is something more than a detached study of Catholicism. 

If I remember correctly (and someone correct me if I am wrong), the UIC Catholic Studies program was an initiative promoted by then-academic dean Stanley Fish.  Fish set out to hire a practicing (do we say "orthodox?") Catholic (Paul Griffiths) for a chair in Catholic studies.  Again, someone can correct me about this, but I seem to remember that Fish saw this all in terms of the postmodern university--a form of postmodern perspectivalism. In other words, the faculty in the Catholic studies program at UIC was asked by Fish to interpret the world through a Catholic world view or Catholic theology.

Catholics and scholars of Catholicism out there--please help me understand this. 


In the meantime, watch Orsi's inaugural lecture:

Fathers on the Frontier

By Kelly Baker

Leslie Tentler reviews our contributor (and my dear friend and fellow FSU alum) Mike Pasquier's Fathers on the Frontier: French Missionaries and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the United States, 1789-1870 (Oxford 2009), in the current issue of American Catholic Studies Newsletter (from the Cushwa Center at Notre Dame).

Tentler's lovely review situates Pasquier's work as on the cutting edge of Catholic history because Fathers on the Frontier examines seriously and thoughtfully the lived religion of Catholic priests. Tentler explains that her generation of historians focused upon the laity and some times actively attacked 'clerical history.' She notes:

Candid discussions of priestly life, however--its tensions, rewards, and material particulars--were extremely rare. Priests in this literature seemed to float not just above history but above the needs, drives, and psychological conflicts that bedevil the lives of lesser mortals (10).

She further continues that Pasquier focuses upon the "lived experience of the priesthood helps us to grasp the complexities of the system--the contingent nature of episcopal authority, for example, or the cultural capital enjoyed by the laity, even in times of plentiful priestly vocations" (11).

In his examination of priests as both father and brothers, Pasquier demonstrates the messiness of their relationships with one another and their parishes. Priests walked between the worlds of the sacred and profane, official authority and personal relationships, faith and doubt. Tentler reveals that Pasquier's examination of 'clerical thought and emotion' provides "psychologically rich territory--so rich, indeed, that one wonders why historians of my generation, intrigued as many of us by counter-cultural phenomena, have been reluctant to venture there" (11). She concludes, "Happily for all concerned, Pasquier has provided an excellent model for our imitation" (13).

For the review in entirety, click here (pages 10-13), and Chuck Lippy weighs in at the Journal of Southern Religion, too.

The Tea Party and Catholic Schools

Michael J. Atman

In case you missed them, here are two posts that our readers might find interesting.

The first comes from Thomas Kidd over at Patheos. He offers a brief review of Jill Lepore's The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History. He writes:

To be fair, there's a lot of interesting history interspersed with these gratuitous fulminations. But Lepore's rant against the Tea Party is at once predictable and ironic. Predictable because Lepore fulfills the stereotypical reaction that one would expect from a liberal (I do not say "far left") Harvard professor, who cannot fathom what could motivate these Tea Partiers other than racism and religious fanaticism. The Whites of Their Eyes is ironic because it perpetuates exactly the sort of angry political feuding that Lepore ostensibly deplores. Because of the book's tone, there's no chance that anyone affiliated with the Tea Party will read this book and be chastened by it. About the only thing this kind of book is guaranteed to do is to make left-wing readers feel good about themselves.

The second comes from Religion Dispatches, where Marian Ronan discusses Timothy Dolan, John Hughes, and Catholic schools in New York.

The American Catholic Revolution

by Kathy Cummings

My review of Mark Massa’s The American Catholic Revolution: How the ‘60s Changed the Church Forever (Oxford, 2010) appears in the most recent issue of America.

It’s a very positive review (I compared my level of excitement for a new Mark Massa book with that my daughter had towards new Harry Potter novels); it really is a great book that you should all read.

But I do make one critique in my review. Here it is, in an excerpt:

Scholars who follow Massa’s lead in the future would do well to apply his thesis more comprehensively to issues of women and gender. Alas, his book is indeed a “master narrative” in the sense that, with the notable exception of Mother Caspary of the I.H.M.s, all its protagonists are men. A discussion of women’s ordination or the abortion question would have enhanced the study. Strictly speaking, of course, both Roe v. Wade and the Women’s Ordination Conference belong to the 1970s, but they do fall within the purview of “the long ’60s,” a term most American historians use to limn the period. More significantly, though, both of these developments were undoubtedly rooted in the events Massa describes, and they were—and remain—quite central to any discussion of an “American Catholic revolution.”

So when I was writing this paragraph, I had conflicting emotions. On the one hand, I was worried about sounding like a broken record: “Here she goes again, harping on the absence of female subjects,” I imagined my phantom reader thinking. Am I becoming a cliché, I wondered?

But on the other hand, I was angry. Why SHOULD I have to point out time and again that it might be nice to include a few more women in your study/lecture/conference paper/whatever, not because it would fulfill some kind of politically correct quota but because it might actually help you strengthen or refine your argument? Too often I have heard people who ignore women defend themselves by saying that they are just not “interested” in women’s history. Well, who says it’s okay—let alone historically responsible--not to be interested in half of the human population?

Fatal Attraction: The FBI, the Catholic Church, and Robert Hanssen

Paul Harvey

Remember Robert Hanssen? The former FBI agent/Soviet spy and strictly devout Catholic member of Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic lay order? Hanssen's career as a mole and spy, and his tracking and arrest, were captured in the 2007 film Breach. Since then, Hanssen has become my neighbor, taking up residence in "Supermax," the maximum-security facility in Florence, Colorado, just about 1.25 hours away from me.

The arrest of someone responsible for what some called the "worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history" (I might nominate pretty much all "intelligence" about Vietnam in the 1960s, about civil rights leaders from WW II to the 1970s, and Iraq ca. 2001-2003 for that prize, but we're not here to argue the point) led to considerable speculation about how and why a super-patriot Opus Dei member would have spent decades selling out, rather cheaply, to Soviet agents, and it also led to a lot of articles about the attraction that agencies such as the FBI had to younger conservative Catholic men of a certain generation. The new book below, reviewed in Choice, appears to be a fuller-length exploration of some of those questions; some of you may be interested.

Rosswurm, Steve. The FBI and the Catholic Church, 1935-1962. Massachusetts, 2009. 330p index afp; ISBN 9781558497290, $39.95. Reviewed in 2010oct CHOICE.

In a series of mini-biographical sketches, Rosswurm (Lake Forest College) focuses on the interconnectedness of men who expressed and exercised shared values of patriarchy and authority, hierarchical discipline, and the recognition of real threats to the respective organic bodies of the FBI and the Catholic Church. These men-in-charge established a special relationship that one could argue was symbiotic in its uniqueness, beginning not with the FBI in general, but with the "catholic Protestant"--J. Edgar Hoover. From Hoover's apex were born like-minded individuals who recruited, nurtured, and fed information to those "protestant Catholics," an excellent use of both "catholic" and "protestant" requiring readers to think beyond the mere religiosity of their connections. Their all-encompassing battle against communism necessitated that both organizations "put aside that which set [them] apart" "to intervene directly in the workings of citizens' group[s]" deemed harmful to the very core of Americanism. Subsequent chapters highlight specific individuals serving as point men in the battle of moral absolutes. The story, however, leaves the reader wanting. Do the catholic beliefs employing protestant means end with the demise of communism, or has their alliance moved on to other battlefields? Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. -- G. Donato, Bentley University

Thanks to these our brethren: George Washington on Religious Civility in Wartime

by Chris Beneke

General David Petraeus’ warning this week about the dangers posed to U.S. troops by Koran burning in the states brings to mind a notable incident in American religious history. Amid the siege of British-occupied Boston in 1775, the recently appointed commander of the Continental Army, General George Washington issued an order that must have resulted in some grumbling in the ranks. For decades, English and American Protestants had burned effigies of the Pope to celebrate the thwarting of (the Catholic) Guy Fawkes' attempt to blow up Parliament on November 5, 1605. Bostonians marked the anniversary in a particularly lively way that featured fireworks, two flammable "Popes," and one grand fistfight. But in November 1775, with Catholic support for the American war effort desperately needed, an irritated Washington ordered his soldiers to forgo their beloved Pope's Day festivities. The words that he included in his orders may be worth recalling:

As the Commander in Chief has been apprized of a design form’d for the observance of that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the Effigy of the pope – He cannot help expressing his surprise that there should be Officers and Soldiers in this army so void of common sense, as not to see the impropriety of such a step at this Juncture; at a Time when we are solliciting, and have really obtain’d, the friendship and alliance of the people of Canada, whom we ought to consider as Brethren embarked in the same Cause. The defence of the general Liberty of America: At such a juncture, and in such Circumstances, to be insulting their Religion, is so monstrous, as not to be suffered or excused; indeed instead of offering the most remote insult, it is our duty to address public thanks to these our Brethren, as to them we are so much indebted for every late happy Success over the common Enemy in Canada.

The campaign in Canada didn't end well. But Washington's sentiment--that we have good friends, of different faiths, aiding us against a common enemy--might still be of some value.

Non-Papists

By Chris Beneke

A Friday post on the New York Review of Books site by the distinguished Notre Dame scholars John T. McGreevy and R. Scott Appleby looks at the "Ground Zero mosque" controversy through the lens of American Catholic history. The duo offer several important insights. Among them: "the American acceptance and encouragement of Catholic parishes and schools once seen as threatening reshaped an international religious institution [the Catholic Church]" and that "if the Catholic experience in the United States holds any lesson it is that becoming American also means asserting one's constitutional rights, fully and forcefully, even if that assertion is occasionally taken to be insulting." McGreevy and Appleby concede that the analogy between nineteenth-century Catholics and modern Muslims is imperfect. Nonetheless, it is illuminating, and should inspire at least a glimmer of hope.

At least four additional points might be added to McGreevy and Appleby's analysis:

1) Muslims (particularly Sunnis) lack the centralized direction that bound nineteenth-century Catholic clergy and laity to a non-democratic foreign agenda--American Muslims are not constrained by the pronouncements of distant authorities, and certainly not by al Qaeda.

2) American Muslims are supported by a large constituency of civil rights advocates. More importantly, they are protected by a federal government with much broader powers than its nineteenth-century counterpart (nor should we forget the support and protections offered by the mayor, the Governor, and state and local law.) Nineteenth-century Catholics had many allies and sympathizers among Protestants. They also benefited from an already vibrant tradition of religious liberty and mutual respect. Still, their position vis-a-vis both state authority and public opinion was probably more precarious than that of modern Muslims.

3) American Catholics arrived in massive numbers during the mid-nineteenth century. Today, U.S. Muslim population growth is robust, but it pales in relative terms to the hundreds of thousands of Irish Catholics who landed in U.S. cities during the 1840s and 1850s. As much as the growing Muslim community will contribute to American society, its social and political footprint is likely to be less conspicuous than the one left by mid-nineteenth-century Irish Catholics.

4) Particularly in the last decades,the United State has prided itself on a tradition of religious diversity and religious inclusion. We have also gained a sharper appreciation for our previous failings in this regard. Appleby and McGreevy are not just champions of this formidable tradition; they are illustrations of it.

In sum, our history--especially our recent history--bodes well for our future. We have seen the same sort of reaction before, and it passed. Hackles were raised, distant authorities were cited, and brutal violence was invoked, yet our better natures prevailed and our tradition of equal rights was enriched. There will have to be accommodation and there will have to be time for healing. But if we take history as our guide, there is reason for optimism.