Rejoice and Shout: A Journey through Gospel Music History

Paul Harvey

The new documentary Rejoice and Shout premieres this week. It’s a documentary featuring black gospel performances over a full century, from the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet in 1902 to some contemporary stars. The film has gotten a lot of nice write-ups; the link takes you to the film's website, where you can learn more about it. Here in flyover land probably will have to wait until it moves from the “save” to the “queue” part of my Netflix list. A little bit from the NPR segment on the documentary:

Director Don McGlynn, a veteran of the music documentary genre, wanted to trace gospel from its earliest roots to its current incarnation in the music world. The film even plays the first known recording of gospel music, a record made in 1902 by the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet.

The New York Times published a substantial review of the film here; a little excerpt:

This historical survey of the genre draws heavily on the extensive archives of its producer, Joe Lauro, and is grounded in the work of two experts: Anthony Heilbut, who wrote the classic book “The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times,” and Bil Carpenter, whose “Uncloudy Days: The Gospel Music Encyclopedia” chronicles the lives and careers of more than 650 gospel figures. Their analyses are supplemented by the observations of Jacquie Gales Webb, the host of a popular radio program. Mr. Heilbut’s approach is primarily scholarly and historical, and Mr. Carpenter’s is more sociological and political. Smokey Robinson, who introduces the film and offers its closing observations, sets its praiseworthy tone

If anyone wants to read the whole review but is shout out by the Times firewall, let me know and I’ll send to you.

I will be interested to see how it compares to my recent favorite in the genre of gospel documentaries, How Sweet It Was: The Sights and Sounds of Gospel’s Golden Age. This one comes as a documentary and a CD, and it features some astounding older clips; the DVD is basically a strung-together version of those full clips, so not really a “documentary” but more of a compilation. Anyway, I’m looking forward to Rejoice and Shout; if anyone reading this living around a real city gets a chance to watch it, feel free to post your thoughts here.

While you're waiting to see Rejoice and Shout, here's a great clip on Youtube that can be seen in its entirety on How Sweet it Was, for your enjoyment: The Meditation Singers doing "Sanctified Lord."

"The change is not in itself, but in them"

BY MICHAEL PASQUIER

“Look out at that ocean, that sky, the fish, the birds, wild and wicked out in the chaos. Is there a god that can deliver us from the chaos of nature?”

--Reverend Carlton in the film Glory at Sea

This is an appropriate question to ask on a day when the Army Corps of Engineers opens a floodway that will displace at least 2,500 people, devastate thousands of acres of farmland, and destroy hundreds of homes and businesses in order to avoid the same tragedy in more populated areas like Baton Rouge (my home) and New Orleans.

Morganza Floodway (under normal conditions)

Morganza Floodway (1973)

Glory at Sea, according to its creators, is a 30-minute film about "a group of mourners and a man spat from the depths of Hades [who] build a boat from the debris of New Orleans to rescue their lost loved ones trapped beneath the sea."

Glory At Sea! from Court 13 on Vimeo.

From my perspective, Glory at Sea is a film about religion. It is about living in a broken world, seeking order in chaos, and finding meaning in suffering. It is about a people in exile, a people lost at sea, a people without a home. Recently, students in my “Religion in Louisiana” course watched the film and wrote an essay relating its themes to several other books about life in Louisiana and the Mississippi River Delta, including Brenda Marie Osbey's collection of poems All Saints, Tennessee Williams’ play Vieux Carré, and William Alexander Percy’s autobiography Lanterns on the Levee. They hated me for it. But they also got it.

What we’re watching along the Mississippi River is indeed about the chaos of nature, but it’s the kind that comes when we engineer nature in order to delivery us from chaos. William Alexander Percy knew a little something about the Mississippi River when he wrote, “The gods on their thrones are shaken and changed, but it abides, aloof and unappeasable, with no heart except for its own task, under the unbroken and immense arch of the lighted sky where the sun, too, goes a lonely journey. As a thing used by men it has changed: the change is not in itself, but in them.”

Pasquier on the Impact of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Randall Stephens

Mike Pasquier has been a busy guy. In addition to writing his rich study of Jesuits in late 18th and 19th century America, our fellow RiAH blogger has been collaborating with other LSU researchers who are studying the impact of the Deepwater Hoirzon oil spill. Ashley Berthelot at LSU Gold reports:

Michael Pasquier, assistant professor of religious studies and historian at LSU, has developed "Standard Lives: Visualizing the Culture of Oil in Louisiana." The goal of this project is to complement scientific investigations of the Deepwater Horizon disaster by documenting the cultural impact of environmental stressors on Louisiana's coastal communities.

"To do this, it's necessary to look at oil from 'the ground up,' so to speak," said Pasquier. "I knew we needed to take a long and unbiased look at Louisiana's relationship with the oil industry, and by extension, its effects on the everyday lives of refinery and offshore workers, as well as the businessmen, teachers, farmers, fishermen, mariners, homemakers and others with direct and indirect ties to petroleum-based services."

Pasquier started his project by delving into a photo collection at the University of Louisville that showcased in detail how the industry fundamentally transformed the social and environmental landscape of Louisiana at mid-century. . . .

"As a native of Louisiana, I grew up in a family and in communities with deep stakes in the oil industry, so I already had my finger on the pulse of a people economically and culturally invested in oil. Now, what I wanted to do was to find a way to look behind the typical photos of a literally oiled landscape to see the faces of people who are directly impacted by even the most subtle of economic and environmental changes," said Pasquier. "When we look at the photos of oily pelicans or an oiled coastline, we should also be trying to understand the backstory that was there long before the oil spill. We should also be looking for the everyday human story that isn't drenched in oil." . . .

"This isn't about justifying our use of oil, or being pro-oil or pro-environment," Pasquier said. "It's about assessing the terrible consequences of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster by taking the time to focus on and understand the big picture, the realities that exist in everyday life for many Louisianans. This is about our history and our culture – this is about us and our future." read on >>>

Many of us heard Mike's preview of this tremendous work at the 2010 AAR. Can't wait to see the eight short documentaries that will result!

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.

What to Do With God in America

Paul Harvey

While we're in catch-up blogging mode, I meant to link to this piece earlier, "What to Do with God in America," over at A Lively Experiment, David McConeghy's blog. McConeghy summarizes and provides links to various of the summaries/reviews/academic critiques of the PBS series, and then proposes an elaborate classroom exercise over a period of week in which students would examine the narrative of the film on their own, and get involved in making a proposed film of their own.

With all the discussion about PBS’ God in America series, it occurred to me that it might be possible to use the series as the basis for a course that privileges deconstruction of the (maligned) narrative that PBS built and therefore employ remixes as a way for students to create counter-narratives that explicitly engage the primary source. Perhaps the documentary would provide a shortcut allowing us to manage both content and technical mastery.

We had some discussion here earlier about the pros/cons of blogging, especially for younger scholars and graduate students. This kind of post certainly fits in the "pro" category, as it provides the kind of reflection on teaching and innovative proposal on classroom work that should be impressive to any search committee.

From the Underside of the Millennium: My Take on God in America

Paul Harvey

Today's Religion Dispatches features a few of my thoughts on the God in America series which premiered last week: "The Brutality of the American Eden: From the Underside of the Millennium." As the post makes clear, I enjoyed and appreciated the series, but wanted to raise some questions about freedom and authority in American history:

But I do want to ask what this series would look like if we also understand American religious history to be about coercion and authority? Most of God in America is about the white Protestant majority in American history. In a series on religion and public life, that is fair enough; they have dominated religion and public life. But what if we make coercion,establishment, and repression as central to our narrative as freedom, disestablishment, and expression? What if this is a show in which Americans’ self-understanding as derived from Exodus is more critically examined than celebrated?

Read the full post here, and I'd love to hear your thoughts either at Religion Dispatches or here.

Oh, and while you're at it, catch Matt Sutton's take on the series here, also at Religion Dispatches. Matt defends the series against professorial carping, praises its success in reaching a broader public, and points out how much we all engage in our own forms of condensation and simplifying to get across a few basic points.

God in America and Voices in the Classroom

Emily Clark

Like most in our discipline, I watched the God in America series on PBS. There are many elements of the series that have been discussed here and on other blogs, such as events, figures, or themes left out of the series, overly represented in the series, or given an unexpected portrayal. While listening to the commentators and following the story they mapped, I thought about American religious history narratives and how particular events can make all the difference to the story.

As a Ph.D. student at Florida State University, I get the opportunity to teach a section of the Religion in US History survey course. Each time I have taught it or assisted a professor, the narrative is different. Given our varied research interests, what we know best and what we most enjoy exploring seeps into our courses. I most enjoy teaching when pushing my students to think about the role race has played in our nation’s history and how its influence in American religion has never been neutral. And I know this leaves less time for other topics, but like all teachers, I try to negotiate it best I can. For a survey course, I find the most frustrating planning part to be: what to cut and who to leave out. Course organization varies as we decide whether to cover the history chronologically or thematically. For example, God in America chose chronologically and devoted one-third of the airtime for the latter half of the twentieth century to the present. Over six hours or fifteen short weeks, preparation decisions whittle down the story to fit the time allotted, and all the deities in the world know I wish for more time.

At the 2008 National American Academy of Religion meeting in Chicago, the Q&A during a panel on violence in American religious history brought survey course organization into the discussion. Not entirely surprising, it was a graduate student working on teaching her own undergraduate course who raised it. One of the audience members who offered guidance was Thomas Tweed, whose 1997 edited volume Retelling U.S. Religious History called the academy’s attention to the way we narrate our field. Recognizing our own voices in our work and their impact on our (hi)stories force a scholastic self-reflexivity that is also applicable to our teaching style and our relationship as a field with the public. God in America told a particular story that encourages me to reflect upon what I impart onto the undergraduates I teach.

God in America Alongside the Myth of American Religous Freedom

Paul Harvey

I'm working up a more coherent response to the God in America series, and hope to have that up soon. Over at Killling the Buddha, Nathan Schneider is live-blogging the series (last part is tonight), with Stephen Prothero (a major commentator on the series) and others joining in the fun, so check that out if you want to chat about the show while watching it.

For those of you (I'm talking to you pesky scholars here, especially, but others will be interested) annoyed at something of fundamental importance missing in the series, or of the treatment given to some individual or episode, make sure to check out the full website accompanying the series. It's full of detail, and presents a more complex and satisfying narrative than is possible in a documentary that, of necessity, has to distill and narrate in very broad strokes. For those of you wanting to use clips from the film for class, the author interviews, background stories, and further narrative provided in the "study guide" available at the website will be indispensable in enriching students' understanding. As some have noted here, this is basically a series about religion and public life (that's the subtitle to the series, in fact), but it could certainly be used as a springboard to lead students to explore other avenues of religious expression (music, art, interior experiences, religion and the body, and numerous others) that the film does not attempt to cover at the same level it devotes to the "intersections" of religion and public life.

As it happens, I'm watching the series while having just finished David Sehat's forthcoming book (out this January from Oxford) The Myth of American Religious Freedom, and Sarah Barringer Gordon's The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America. If God in America is basically a story of religious liberty and freedom and their effects on religion in public life (and is at times, as John Fea writes below, a pretty Whiggish version of that story), Sehat's and Gordon's books taken together tell a story of the coercive nature of what Sehat calls the "moral establishment," and the struggles of religious dissenters (including in David's book the abolitionists, Stanton and early feminists, Mormons, progressive intellectuals, and others; and in Gordon's book everyone from the Jehovah's Witnesses to Elijah Muhammad to Beverely LaHaye and the Concerned Women of America to gay religious activists arguing on behalf of same-sex marriage) to articulate a fundamentally different vision of freedom than that establishment wanted to allow. Taken together, both of them present a kind of intellectual and social history of how people dealt with the abstract concept of religious freedom from the Founders down to the 2000s. They are both dealing with a basic contrast in what Gordon calls legal (or "technical") constitutionalism versus popular constitutionalism, and with the broad forces that have fundamentally altered constitutional "regimes" in different periods of American history. I hope in the future to post here an author interview with Sehat, and further thoughts of my own on the social history of what "religious freedom" has meant in American history, a subject I aim to write a book about one of these days.

I've blogged a bit before about Gordon's work, which is out and available from Harvard (having now read the book, I commend it to you wholeheartedly; apart from the intellectual content, it's really a fun read, and to say that it covers a "big tent" of fascinating and often ornery and cantankerous characters is putting it mildly).

As for Sehat's book, he's been producing a series of blog posts over at U.S. Intellectual History, where he outlines and develops some of his themes. His posts are a real intellectual treat, so check them out as a preview of the book; here's a brief description from Oxford:

In the battles over religion and politics in America, both liberals and conservatives often appeal to history. Liberals claim that the Founders separated church and state. But for much of American history, David Sehat writes, Protestant Christianity was intimately intertwined with the state. Yet the past was not the Christian utopia that conservatives imagine either. Instead, a Protestant moral establishment prevailed, using government power to punish free thinkers and religious dissidents. In The Myth of American Religious Freedom , Sehat provides an eye-opening history of religion in public life, overturning our most cherished myths. Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government, which had limited authority. The Protestant moral establishment ruled on the state level. Using moral laws to uphold religious power, religious partisans enforced a moral and religious orthodoxy against Catholics, Jews, Mormons, agnostics, and others. Not until 1940 did the U.S. Supreme Court extend the First Amendment to the states. As the Supreme Court began to dismantle the connections between religion and government, Sehat argues, religious conservatives mobilized to maintain their power and began the culture wars of the last fifty years. To trace the rise and fall of this Protestant establishment, Sehat focuses on a series of dissenters--abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, socialist Eugene V. Debs, and many others. Shattering myths held by both the left and right, David Sehat forces us to rethink some of our most deeply held beliefs. By showing the bad history used on both sides, he denies partisans a safe refuge with the Founders.

It's been a fascinating exercise comparing and contrasting the vision presented in these two wonderful books alongside the (mostly) more optimistic story spun out in the film. It's sort of an exercise in narrative and counter-narrative. More on that in the coming days.

How Faith Transformed America: Blum on God in America

Paul Harvey

Your final reminder for God in America, to be shown starting tonight on your local PBS station. I've posted a few early press reviews of it in recent posts here. But for the most substantive review and critique to date, check out Ed Blum's take on the series over at Patheos. Ed summarizes some of the major themes, characters, and scholarly trends represented in the series, and then imagines what a series of this sort would look like if done ten or twenty years from now -- in other words, what scholarly work is emerging that will find its way into synthetic narratives meant for a more general audience. He finds three in particular:

1) The West will be more of a primary site in the narrative (as in, the western regions of the United States)

2) race will not be relegated as much to the Civil War and Civil rights eras

3 "the body and bodies will become an important place of telling and examining religion in America" -- in other words, "the body" as a site of religious expression will be more central.

While you're enjoying the series, make sure to go over and check out Ed's extensive post.

God in America: Pre-Premiere Reviews and NPR Forum Network

Paul Harvey

A couple of nice reviews of the PBS series God in America to be shown next week, Oct. 11 - 13: this one, from Variety, and this one, from the Boston Phoenix. I'll have more to say on the show both here and at Religion Dispatches, by early next week.

In the meantime, here's a press release from WGBH (where the show originated) on a series of lectures and other events associated with the show:

October 5th, 2010

Press Contact:

Stacy Buchanan617.300.2458

Boston, MA – The PBS|NPR Forum Network has recently added a new series of curated

talks around the upcoming PBS broadcast God In America.

Examine the complex interactions between religion and democracy though the

God In America series, which contains over 100 lectures and talks by the world's biggest

religious experts, scholars, philosophers, and journalists, and features some of the

largest religious debates in the United States.

Journalists and scholars explore the changing landscape of American faith. Other

talks to discover include: Rutgers University political science professor W. Carey

McWilliams discusses the future of Catholicism in America. Stephen Goldsmith, former

special advisor for President Bush, talks about the role of religion in American cities, and

history's greatest minds wrestle with reconciling science and religion.

These are just a few of the many talks that can be found in the God In America

series, all free and respected resources to help the American population better

understand the history, diversity, and freedom behind religion in the United States. You

can join the conversation at: http://forum-network.org/series/god-america-series. The

Forum Network lecture series God In America has been created as a compliment to the

upcoming PBS broadcast, God In America.

God In America, a presentation of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and FRONTLINE,

will explore the historical role of religion in the public life of the United States. The six-

hour series, which interweaves documentary footage, historical dramatization and

interviews with religious historians, will air over three consecutive nights on PBS

beginning Monday, October 11th. Please check with your local PBS station for times.

God in America and the New York Times

Paul Harvey

In today's New York Times, Samuel Freedman does a nice overview of the making of "God in America," to be shown on PBS Oct. 11-13. A brief excerpt:

Having always considered Jefferson “cerebral and slightly allergic to religion,” she recently recalled, [show producer Marilyn] Mellowes was instantly intrigued. The story of the Jefferson Bible, as the refashioned scripture became known, did not fit into Ms. Mellowes’s documentary about nascent Christianity. But it stuck in her memory. And the paradoxical idea that the man credited with creating the metaphor of a wall between church and state cared and studied so deeply about Christianity helped to inspire a documentary about the history and influence of religion in American public life. The result, a six-hour series titled “God in America,” will be broadcast on PBS for three nights starting Oct. 11.

More on this show as we get closer to the premiere!

The Fellowship of Christian Statesmen: From New Contributor Blake Renfro!

Today's post comes from another new contributor (a banner week for us along those lines): Blake Renfro, a graduate student working with Gaines Foster at Louisiana State University. Welcome, Blake!

The Fellowship of Christian Statesmen

by Blake Renfro

A short distance from our nation’s capital there is a modest old row house. A cohort of senators and congressmen live in the house while working in the city. They write their modest rent checks to a decidedly inconspicuous entity known as the “C Street Center.” A recent article in The New Yorker by Peter Boyer, entitled “Frat House for Jesus: The entity behind C Street,” examines the powerful evangelical group that owns the house. (Click here for an older Washington Post article on the same house).

“There’s this whole Washington phenomenon, related to access to power and the aphrodisiac of power,” says one of Boyer’s sources. This observation seems fair. Political culture is defined by ambition and status, but its concomitant religious culture proves more elusive. Ostensibly, individuals like Billy Graham and his successor Rick Warren address the nation’s moral conscious, while acting as personal counsel to the Washington political elite. Boyer’s article reveals a religious entity that seemingly defies this assumption. The C Street row house is one such facet of Washington’s religious culture that both caters to power and eschews it at the same time. The house is an ideal part-time residence for legislators, but it is also an “accountability group,” of politicians who “have pledged to hold one another to a life lived by the principles of Jesus.” The ministry that owns the house is partly funded by an organization known as “The Fellowship.”

The Fellowship was created in the 1950s. According to Boyer, it has become one of the most important evangelical organizations in Washington. Those of us familiar with religion in American life, know that religious groups of every type have lobbyists and activists on Capitol Hill. Born during the height of postwar ecumenism, The Fellowship sponsored the National Prayer Breakfast under the Eisenhower Administration, and it continues to this day. Of course, the main question is: Why haven’t we heard more about this organization? The answer is fairly simple. Doug Coe, the organization’s director for forty years, makes a concerted effort to keep the ministry out of the press. With a fairly modest budget of fifteen-million dollars, Coe and his small staff contribute to a variety of causes in Washington and throughout the world. Yet, the majority of their work “is interpersonal ministry to the powerful.” The Fellowship has established numerous small prayer groups throughout the city, which bring together politicians and bureaucratic officials. Unlike the preaching of more public evangelicals, Coe’s brand of Christianity is less concerned with salvation. The Fellowship focuses on shaping the morality of power and influence. Washington’s political culture might seem immoral, but Doug Coe believes he can persuade the powerful to live a life of humility and good character. He has won accolades from Ronald Reagan, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and many others.

Critics charge that The Fellowship is a secretive organization which hinders democratic ideals. In a recent interview on Fresh Air, the writer Jeff Sharlet suggests the organization has supported Ugandan legislation which would make homosexuality punishable by death. Sharlet ignores the rather broad reach of Doug Coe’s ministry, arguing that The Fellowship is merely a fringe movement that “recasts theology in the language of empire.” There might be some truth to this observation. But, The Fellowship has earned the respect of nearly every powerful politician in Washington. This phenomenon encourages us to reconsider the intersection of political and religious culture. Sometimes powerful leaders find solace from unlikely companions.

The C Street row house, despite its flaws, illustrates how democratically elected leaders seek resolution in their political differences. Boyer movingly recounts how, in the spring of 2000, Congressman Bart Stupak’s son committed suicide after a high-school graduation party. Laying their differences aside, his housemates from C Street comforted their friend. Tom Coburn, who accompanied Stupak to view his son’s body, concluded that, “There was no decision to be made. I mean, we had to get to Bart and just be there to support him. We had a contingent of ninety members of Congress come to the funeral. And what they got to see was something they hadn’t seen in a long time: Here’s three Republicans and two Democrats lovin’ a brother through a problem.”

God in America, Coming to Your TV Soon!

Paul Harvey

Here's the press release for the much-anticipated PBS "American Experience" production for the fall, "God in America," to be premiered Oct. 11 - Oct. 13. Program summaries are available here.

Coming This Fall to PBS: God in America
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and FRONTLINE present six-hour documentary series

Monday, Oct. 11, 2010 - Wednesday, Oct. 13, 2010, 9-11 p.m. ET

Boston, MA [April 14, 2010] -- How has religious belief shaped American history? What role have religious ideas and spiritual experience played in shaping the social, political, and cultural life of what has become the world's most religiously diverse nation?

For the first time on television, God in America, a presentation of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and FRONTLINE, will explore the historical role of religion in the public life of the United States. The six-hour series, which interweaves documentary footage, historical dramatization and interviews with religious historians, will air over three consecutive nights on PBS beginning Oct. 11, 2010.

God in America examines the potent and complex interaction between religion and democracy, the origins of the American concept of religious liberty, and the controversial evolution of that ideal in the nation's courts and political arena. The series considers the role religious ideas and institutions have played in social reform movements from abolition to civil rights, examining the impact of religious faith on conflicts from the American Revolution to the Cold War, and how guarantees of religious freedom created a competitive American religious marketplace. It also explores the intersection of political struggle and spiritual experience in the lives of key American historical figures including Franciscan Friars and the Pueblo leader Po'pay, Puritan leader John Winthrop and dissident Anne Hutchinson, Catholic Bishop John Hughes, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, Reform Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, Scopes trial combatants William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, evangelist Billy Graham, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Moral Majority's Jerry Falwell.

"The American story cannot be fully understood without understanding the country's religious history," says series executive producer Michael Sullivan. "By examining that history, God in America will offer viewers a fresh, revealing and challenging portrait of the country."

To extend the reach of the series beyond the television screen, God in America has formed strategic partnerships with The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, the Fetzer Institute, Sacred Space International and other organizations. An integrated multimedia campaign set to launch six months prior to broadcast will include community engagement activities, media events and an interactive God in America Web site. The campaign will deepen public understanding of religion and spiritual experience in the life of the nation by encouraging the public to explore the history of their own religious communities and their individual spiritual journeys.

"Americans are awash in a sea of faith, but their knowledge about religious faiths and religious history often runs as shallow as their commitment to religion runs deep," notes Stephen Prothero, chief editorial consultant for God in America, professor of religion at Boston University, and author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- And Doesn't. "A series like God in America can help correct that imbalance and provide the basis for a common understanding of the role religion has played in American public life."

God in America is an AMERICAN EXPERIENCE/FRONTLINE co-production, headed by series executive producer Michael Sullivan, series producer Marilyn Mellowes, series director David Belton, and producer/directors Greg Barker andSarah Colt. The executive producer for FRONTLINE is David Fanning. The executive producer for AMERICAN EXPERIENCE is Mark Samels.

Speaking of Faith in the New York Times

Paul Harvey

Today's NY Times features a nice piece about Krista Tippett, host of the engaging radio program Speaking of Faith (which we've featured a number of times on the blog, including reflections on the show's programs about evolution and religion on television). Tippett and I both grew up in Oklahoma (at almost exactly the same time), the product of conservative Baptist backgrounds, so while we've never met I feel some kinship with the sense of searching that is always palpable on the show. Here's a taste of the article:

Despite being broadcast in most markets in the God ghetto of 7 a.m. on Sunday, “Speaking of Faith” draws nearly 600,000 listeners on 240 stations across the country, a sixfold increase in both measures since 2003. The show also gets 1.3 million downloads a month.

With both a Peabody Award and a best-selling book to her name, Ms. Tippett has become identified with a particular public-radio program the way, say, Ira Glass is with “This American Life” or Terry Gross with “Fresh Air.”

The Tippett style represents a fusion of all her parts — the child of small-town church comfortable in the pews; the product of Yale Divinity School able to parse text in Greek and theology in German; and, perhaps most of all, the diplomat seeking to resolve social divisions.

“My background as a diplomat is as important for this subject as my training as a journalist,” Ms. Tippett, who contributed reporting to The New York Times from Germany in the 1980s, said in an interview in her studio in St. Paul. “Religion is a touchy subject. You’re really getting at the core of people’s identities, an intimate place. This religious sphere in our public life is very charged, and I want to disarm that.

Tippett's recent book Einstein's God features a selection of her radio conversations about religion and science. It's very nice to see Tippett and the program doing so well.

PBS's God in America Series

Randall Stephens

In fall 2010 PBS will broadcast what looks to be an epic 6-part historical documentary on the American religious experience. Called God in America the program will feature religious studies scholars and historians alongside dramatizations and loads of prints, photographs, and illustrations. Subjects include: Franciscan Friars and the Pueblo leader Po'pay, Puritan leader John Winthrop and dissident Anne Hutchinson, Catholic Bishop John Hughes, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, reform Rabbi Isaac Meyer Wise, Scopes trial combatants William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, evangelist Billy Graham, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Moral Majority's Jerry Falwell. (See the trailer and read more on the official site. Series producer Marilyn Mellowes also worked on critically acclaimed From Jesus to the Christ: The First Christians.) The companion website promises to be a useful resource for the casual viewer and student of religious history alike.

Best of all for cash-strapped libraries, church-mouse poor scholars, and pockets-turned-inside-out departments, the full 6 hours will be available on-line.

The creators summarize the project as follows:

How has religious belief shaped American history? What role have religious ideas and spiritual experience played in shaping the social, political, and cultural life of what has become the world's most religiously diverse nation?

For the first time on television, God in America, a presentation of American Experience and FRONTLINE, will explore the historical role of religion in the public life of the United States. The six-hour series, which interweaves documentary footage, historical dramatization, and interviews with religious historians, will air over three consecutive nights on PBS beginning Oct. 11, 2010. >>>

Florida State University Graduate Symposium

The program schedule for the 9th Annual Florida State University Graduate Symposium is now available. Thirty-nine graduate students from sixteen different institutions will meet February 19-21 in Tallahassee, Florida, where they will discuss matters related to the symposium’s theme, “Sects and Sexuality: Issues of Division and Diversity.” The list of respondents includes some of American religious history’s most notable scholars: Amanda Porterfield, John Corrigan, Amy Koehlinger, and Kathryn Lofton. Bernadette Brooten, the Kraft-Hiatt Professor of Christian Studies at Brandeis University, will provide the keynote address on Friday evening, followed by the announcement of the Leo Sandon Best Paper Award. On Saturday, Professors Brooten, Corrigan, Lofton, and Nicole Kelley will conduct a roundtable discussion on the incorporation of gender in scholarship. Later, symposium participants will be invited to screen the documentary, “Fallen Angel: The Outlaw Larry Norman,” which recounts the rise and fall of Larry Norman, the father of Christian rock music.

Biased sidenote: To all the student readers of this blog, you would be hard-pressed to find a more professional and enjoyable graduate conference in the United States. Its strength as a place for conversation about American religion is obvious. What the program doesn’t say is that you will eat and drink, almost always for FREE, until your stomach is beyond content. If you missed this year, take heart in the fact that there’s always next year. If you’re already going… Well, I’m jealous. Go ReligioNoles!

WWJD, Capitalism, and Michael Moore

by Phillip Luke Sinitiere

I'm not a big moviegoer, but I do watch movies. And, the nerd that I am, I've seen my fair share of documentaries. Always thinking about how to incorporate films clips and media into my classes, on occasion I've used clips of Michael Moore documentaries, segments that often create great discussion.

So, when I heard Moore interviewed last week on Democracy Now! about his latest flick, Capitalism: A Love Story (in theaters this week), my ears perked up when the interviewers addressed the way he incorporates religion in his film. Today I read a review of Moore's film in Political Affairs Magazine, and further peaking my interest the reviewer noted where religion fit into Moore's story:


Raised a Catholic, Moore spares no time in ripping the role of the Catholic church. In Capitalism, he puts the obvious question: what would Christ do with all the greed in the world? He answered that question by showing a more positive picture of the church which played a good role in supporting the historical worker sit-in at the Republic Windows and Doors plant in Chicago. After receiving billions in Wall Street bailout money, the Bank of America refused to extend credit to the owners of that factory, forcing it to close down and lay off the union workers without paying contracted wage and health care benefits. The workers occupied the plant and convinced even President Obama to condemn Bank of America's actions. Within days, the money was released and the owners of the factory agreed to pay what they owed to the workers. Eventually the factory was sold to a California "green energy" company that agreed to rehire the laid-off workers. In addition, Moore paints a positive picture of the liberation theology still held by many in the Catholic leadership in the city of Detroit.

I have not seen Capitalism: A Love Story yet, but from all that I've read, Moore emphasizes that religion is a private matter (read another interview here). But with its presence in the film he makes the discussion public. One might suggest that in a certain way Moore is reframing the age-old question (and marketing gimmick), "What Would Jesus Do?" This is all interesting stuff for scholars of American religion, and I'm planning to incorporate this aspect of Moore's film later this fall in my American religion class.

I wonder if those whose specialties are religion and class (or, for that matter, religion and film and religion and healing) might chime in on these topics, as well as readers in the blogsophere who have seen the film? Or, with a nod to teaching, perhaps readers might share teaching experiences and strategies as to how we incorporate religion and class into American religion courses?

The Parables Will be Televised

Paul Harvey

I've been spending a fair chunk of the summer powering through seasons of television shows -- it's why God invented Netflix and 40 inch flat screens in man caves. Most recently, I'm going through Season Two of Mad Men, which includes some wonderful scenes of a Catholic parish from the early 1960s, an idealistic guitar-strumming father trying to reach out to youth, and a very skeptical Peggy Olson (played by Elisabeth Moss, just nominated for an Emmy for the role), a character trying to make her way up in the world of her sexist Rat Pack office and go through just enough religious ritual to keep her mother happy (while also hiding the secret of her baby). In similar fashion, The Sopranos, Wire, Battlestar Galactica, Saving Grace, and many other shows aren't "about" religion, but feature religious themes and parables centrally in the scripts, and sometimes make serious efforts to feature in dramatic forms the lives of pastors and priests. At their best, they explore human conflict and moral quandaries in ways that we want out of stories and parables.

I've been wondering if this is a golden age of religion in televised drama -- but my media analysis skills seem too amateurish and ill-formed to make any pronouncements. Thus, it was nice to hear yesterday's Speaking of Faith, featuring the religion and media scholar Diane Winston speaking (with her usual insight) with host Krista Tippett on "TV and the Parables of Our Time." The conversation turned often to Winston's class at USC, "Religion, Media, and Hollywood: Faith in TV." Director Ron Moore's appearances in the classroom are clipped here. The theme throughout is the power of television drama to present modern parables, often derived from or inspired by older religious stories but presented in nuanced and complicated contexts, whether the gritty world of Baltimore, the stylized world of early 1960s Madison Avenue, or some sci-fi future world. I was lost during their discussion of Lost, but afficionados of the show (I'm not one) will appreciate that part.

Some of my feeling "left out" in discussions of religion and the media and popular culture, that feeling like the slightly nerdy kid in the corner of the classroom, not entirely sure what the conversation is about, comes from a particular cultural background in rural Oklahoma -- not that much was forbidden in some religious sense, but we were just too isolated and far away from everything to have much of a clue beyond what was rerun on Gilligan's Island and whatever pop hits played from the little radio station in Liberal, Kansas, that we were stuck with in the daytime.

Partly for this reason, I've been drawn to the memoir observations of my old friend Shirley Showalter. As former president of Goshen College, and before that my senior mentor in the Lilly Fellows program, and long before that a Mennonite farm girl, Shirley lived in but not of much of American culture while younger, and has blogged recently on what that feels like. On her blog, which is about the practice of reading/writing memoirs, Shirley has recently reflected on her experience of going to her first rock concert (the recent Dylan-Willie Nelson-Mellencamp fest) and the experience of longing for a television when younger, in part so she could be in the know of her contemporaries' conversations, but even more so because it seemed like television was magic (and also her thankfulness at being compelled to experience other worlds while those contemporaries were staring at the screen).

Some girls want ponies. Some want Barbies. Some are generous enough to think of others first, asking for world peace or food for the hungry. Others go straight for a million dollars. I would not have asked for any of those.

The thing I longed for was magic. All the other kids seemed to have it. At the first recess of the day lots of conversations began with “Did you see. . . .?” And everyone else jumped in to share their impressions of what they saw the night before.

On the radio program, Winston suggested that we need these stories from television shows to help us process bewildering contemporary events; straight media coverage just doesn't suffice, and the urge to narrate and dramatize helps us think through what otherwise seems too baffling or enraging.

Any suggestions for what to use in a classroom presentation on this subject?

Practical Matters, Prayer Pawns, and A Chat on We Shall Remain

Paul Harvey

Emerging briefly from the depths of senior theses and graduate seminar papers, before taking a deep breath and diving back down. Notes of interest on new opportunities for online explorations.

First, Practical Matters, an online journal of religious practice and practical theology published out of Emory, has just posted its first issue, on the theme "Engaging Imagination." Articles and reviews range from photography to dance to "ritual praxis inside the classroom," and a host of other ways to open up the religious imagination. The editors introduce the journal here, and explain further:

In this journal you will find digital scholarship that utiliz­es the capacities of the internet to ask and provoke new questions about religious prac­tices and practical theology. You will also find here a variety of content: peer-reviewed scholarship in several media and genres, reflections and essays by practitioners and teachers, video and audio interviews with scholars, reviews of current work in religious practices and practical theology, musical performances, photographic essays, and more.

Next, Katie Lofton has emerged from her cubbyhole at Princeton to deconstruct the recent nonsensical tit-for-tat about the "National Day of Prayer":

The irony of debates about national prayer is that they transform the experience of nationalism (worthy, perhaps) into a prescription of nationalism (failed, always). Despite our stories plurality (or perhaps because of them), the landscape of American hope and American need has become stunningly arid, silenced by prayer box sets and by rationalist relativism. What now to say before the dying soldier? What now to do during an epidemic of economic dismay? We reach for prayers, but they have become too precious by half, made by both squabbling sides something to demonstrate that you have done (he in the Oval Office, they on the sidewalk of Pennsylvania Avenue), rather than something that you seek to do. Beyond the glare of this hollow exhibitionism, we stretch for something real, we seek a prayer that isn't a pawn. And so I do what most mothers and fathers, lovers and workers, believers and atheists do: I squeeze the hand harder, and ask what I can do to see you better, to know you better, to serve you better. Then (I promise, I pray, I swear, I stand), I will do it.

Finally, I received this email about the PBS series We Shall Remain, a multi-part exploration of Native American History, which will interest some of you.

We would like to invite you to join us for a live chat with Julianna Brannum, co-producer of “Wounded Knee,” the fifth film in PBS’ “We Shall Remain” series. The films explore pivotal episodes in American Indian history. Tomorrow (Tuesday, May 12) at 2pm EST we’ll host a conversation about the film and Julianna’s behind-the-scenes perspective on this moving film. She'll answer your questions live in our hour-long chat.

Go to www.pbs.org/chat on May 12th at 2pm to join the discussion or leave a question for her today.

Aimee Strikes Again. And again. And again.

By Matt Sutton

For those of you who missed the American Experience production Sister Aimee (based on my book) when it aired on PBS almost two years ago, Monday is your lucky day. It will be re-airing nation-wide on March 23 (at 9pm in most regions, but check local listings). In the interest of full disclosure, and according to at least one prominent religious historian who I recently met at a conference, I am “much better looking in real life than on T.V.” (Going on TV right after your wife has a baby is tough, and PBS doesn’t have the same make-up budget as American Idol.)

More importantly, have I got a deal for you. As you begin to think about placing fall book orders for your classes, you might want something smart and sophisticated like Blum’s W.E.B. DuBois. Or you might want something based on impeccable research, like Stephens’ The Fire Spreads. Or you might want something profound like Harvey’s Freedom’s Coming. Then again you might want a great read like Turner’s Bill Bright. But for those of you who are sensitive to these trying economic times, and who really care about your students’ mounting debt, you can order what is cheap. Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America is coming to paperback in a few weeks. You can pre-order it on Amazon for a measly $12.89. Your students will love you for it and so will God.