Simple Things You See are All Complicated: Random Reflections on the 2nd Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture

Paul Harvey

The simple things you see are all complicated
I look pretty young, but I'm just back-dated, yeah
The Who, "Substitute"

If it's a lie, then we fight, on that lie. But we gotta fight.
Slim Charles in The Wire

Elesha, Janine, and Kelly have initiated a vigorous conversation arising from one particular session at the 2^nd Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture which concluded just over a week ago. Because I had to leave just before this particular session, I don’t have much to add to it in particular, but I had a few stray thoughts on other parts of the meeting to throw up here. Today’s post will be lighter, more observations about some key phrases and indelible memories that I’ll carry from the conference. Tomorrow I hope to develop a few more serious thoughts about one session in particular, the one involving a discussion about the "bracketing" of religious belief in religious studies -- its rationale, its benefits, and its costs.

Before continuing, the last session was on "The Future of American Religion," but I was unable to be there, so am really hoping that one of ya'll out there will post on the discussion that went on there.

The first thought: a shout out to my partner in crime Philip Goff for organizing the conference in the first place, a huge undertaking of fundraising and organization. I don’ t know whether Phil got thanked at the end, but having lunch with him just before I left, he told myself and someone else present about his death struggle with the J.W. Marriott (the conference hotel) to get them to do what they had in fact been contracted to do (such as set up our room chairs in a circular pattern, put us in the room agreed to, etc.). Conference attendees don’t normally think about stuff like that, but suffice to say after threatening to call in his university lawyers and engaging in numerous conversations with the Marriott staff, the hotel at last came through with what they were contracted to come through with. That was a lot of work they had to go to just so we could sit around and talk.

All went smoothly, but not without a lot of background fighting leading up to the event. Anyway, since scholars tend to bitch and find fault with individual sessions or presenters or anything else, a shout out for those (Phil and his assistant Becky Vasko in particular) who make these things possible.

Second, I have no doubt that long after some of the substantive intellectual discussions have been forgotten, I’ll still remember some of the shorter or even “throwaway “ observations, conversations, and barroom late night jesting. Here are a few that stick with me (I had some others at the time, but they disappeared after the third martini).

One presenter, Su’ad Abdul Khabeer, discussing her research on the styles and head scarves of inner-city Muslim women, related that the women she studies refer to their scarf styles as “hood-jabs.” Her entire discussion of the phenomenon of "Muslim Cool" was the single most interesting ethnographic description I've heard in a good while, and a reminder of the tireless vitality of American religious cultures. She might have been the only person there from the discipline of Anthropology (maybe there were others, but I didn't see any), and as someone who did a minor field in Cultural Anthropology lo so many years ago I still enjoy hearing work from that perspective.

At the session on religion and market models, James Hudnut-Beumler, a scholar of religion and economics, author recently of In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism, and Dean of the Div. School at Vanderbilt, related a conversation he had once with Ben Bernanke at some kind of conference or meeting. Bernanke asked him what he studied, and he replied “religion.” Bernanke answered back, “I can explain that.” Bernanke was being a little facetious, but only a little, for he went on to give an economic analysis, based on rational choice theory, on why women historically would predominate in many types of religious organizations (basically, their “wages” from this participation were equal to or greater than the discriminatory wages they would have faced – and would still face – in the secular marketplace and workplace). The idea here was both to suggest what we can learn from approaches drawn from market models of religion, as well as why we resist the hegemony of those models – the irritation we feel at the “I can explain that,” even when meant only half-seriously, is an irritation at a reductionism run amok.

And yet, reductionism is a tool that leads to significant insights (like, what's causing that e coli outbreak? and why are there more religious "nones" now than there used to be?), so it never hurts when humanists get exposed to social science scholars who use the word "data" a lot. There will always be a fair amount of cross-disciplinary carping at these kinds of conferences, a small price to pay for crossdisciplinary conversations.

At the very first session, we had a great “ethnographic moment,” in an impromptu discussion between Robert Orsi and Jan Shipps, renowned scholars both but slightly separated generationally, concerning whether we can “bracket out” religious belief in our studies. In reflecting on her pioneering studies of Mormonism, Shipps noted how she always said (or implied) “for them,” as in “for them, these visions were real.” Orsi replied that the problem with the “for them” bracketing was that it could easily lead to “for them, these visions were real – and they are crazy.”

I hope to develop a fuller post on this conversation early this week, as it was the session that ultimately interested me the most, but just this brief conversation between the two raised the same kinds of issues and back-and-forth responses which Orsi and Richard Bushman discussed recently in the journal Dialogue (see Chris Jones’s post on that), and which Orsi and Stephen Prothero batted back-and-forth several years ago in a discussion that is still frequently referenced – click here for a useful summary of that. I have noted recently that a lot of folks are assigning that discussion to students in classes, because it really gets to the heart of the matter of how scholars conceive of themselves and their work in religion.

Is the “whoosh” that we get from sporting events (or from some other mass group activity that induces emotional excitement in individuals) the same as the “whoosh,” the rapid firing of neurons and physiological response, that “we” get from religion? If so, is religion some sort of minor subdiscipline of cognitive psychology and neuro-biology? This became the theme of a lively discussion between Ann Taves (whose recent work has been done in collaboration, so I gather, with neuro-psychologists and other scientists) and Tracy Fessenden, who spoke eloquently of her resistance to adopting the scientific model of study as a means of accessing the huge money and prestige that scientists win at universities, in comparison to the perpetually impoverished and denigrated state of the humanities at many (most?) institutions nowadays – especially state institutions where “productivity” is measured in grant dollars raised. I don't mean to suggest that Taves was leading that direction -- certainly not true for the President of the AAR! But we are entering a new era of discussion (beyond the "two cultures" model) of sciences and the humanities, and there's an awful lot at stake in those discussions.

Rachel Wheeler concluded one session by noting how our generation of scholars always ends up saying, in effect, “it’s complicated.” That is certainly my classroom mode, and the message one would end up with at a conference like this. Yet others in the room, especially those in the social sciences, bring more concrete questions (and therefore answers) to the table, as when Roger Finke discussed some of the findings that can be gleaned from sociological studies of religious behavior such as he has conducted in some of his well-known studies. That brings us back to the discussion that Hudnut-Beumler and Ben Bernanke had about “I can explain that.” The humanists in the room stiffen their backbones against any explanation that does not invoke complexity and some degree of unknowability; some (not all) of the social scientists naturally are drawn to projects that focus on concrete questions and answers – has religious/philanthropic giving risen or fallen over time as a percentage of people’s incomes? Has the pay of clergy risen or fallen relative to other professions over the longue duree (answer: fallen, but you already knew that)? And so on.

As a humanist at heart, naturally I gravitate towards “It’s complicated” as my answer for most important questions. For the smaller questions, we can find answers, but for the bigger questions that drew me into academic studies in the first place, our answers will be tentative at best. Therefore, my classroom pedagogy tends to be deconstructively Socratic, in the sense of proposing questions, letting students pose hypotheses, poking holes/finding problems with those hypotheses, and then commanding them to “go and research some more” at the end of the period (they probably go to toga parties instead, but at least I want to leave them with the idea of the beautiful confusion of historical research). Is that, ultimately, where I want to leave it? I don’t think that will leave the assessment committee at my university very happy, since we are supposed to be assessing concrete bits of student learning.

But that leads to a final irony: I am chair of our departmental assessment committee (that's a committee of one -- but full of self-doubt as I am, reaching consensus is surprisingly difficult), so I get to develop the instruments to test exactly what bytes of data students "learn." Since I developed them, our instruments, therefore, essentially capture the degree to which students "get" the concept "it's complicated."

Is “boring from within” the way to beat a bureaucratic system that inevitably beats down individuals? On the other hand, as a lover and scholar of The Wire, I also know that, ultimately, the institution always wins, so we shall see whether, like Slim Charles, I "fight on that lie," just because we have to fight, or whether "boring from within" is simply carving a hole in my own academic soul.

Ultimately, in this age of the privatization of public goods such as education, the game does change, while it also just gets more fierce -- as Kathryn Lofton and Sylvester Johnson reminded us in their presentations on/critiques of (respectively) neoliberalism and its influence in market models of religion, and the relationship of American religion to the American imperial state. Reflecting further on the privatization of the public good of education (as in Colorado, where state funding now represents less than 8% of the CU budget) threw some cold water on the neural "whoosh" that conferences such as this, at their best, provide. (And if, like Janine, you live in Illinois, then that water bath is even colder.)

Tuesday Merry-Go-Round: From Oprah to Rob Bell to Chick-Fil-A to R. J. Rushdoony's Righter-Than-Thou Economics (And Why They all Matter)

Paul Harvey

If you're like me and pushing your red pen up a Sisyphean pile of papers, you may not have time to get to any of these good reads right away, but I'll put some good stuff to read later for you up here so you can get to it when you can get to it. Yes, it's miscellaneous but good links day here.

First, we've noted here the great set of dialogues going over at Immanent Frame (with 12 substantive and engaging responses now) on Kathryn Lofton's Oprah: Gospel of an Icon. The latest entrant in the conversation is our friend Tracy Fessenden's O Tedious Selfhood, a wonderful and very funny take. A brief taste:

How has the trajectory of American religious history brought us to this place, this Oprah?

A thumbnail history might go like this: The Protestant sanctification of the commonplace, the discovery of divine light in the mundane array of objects and acts taken up by a priesthood of believers, proves a boon to American merchants and clerics alike. As Protestantism finds itself more and more at home in the New World, its religious dispositions and their modes of production become less separable from everyday life—indeed, they come to make up the fabric of everyday life. This means your life. The erstwhile Puritan discipline of self-scrutiny brings the things of the world increasingly into its purview, reading them for the shimmering glint of spiritual favor. Advertising, the most aspiring of evangelical preaching’s bastard offspring, offers the promise of entry into a more charismatic life in exchange for the dissipation of spiritual and economic capital: buy, believe, buy and believe more. Consumer choice and religious option open along the same paths, obscuring relational possibilities and imperatives that might bind you to a particular past, a more circumscribed future, to anything that might constrain the unfolding of your own best life. Women gain ground in the commercial revolution faster and more easily than they wrest standing from church authorities, leaving the latter to play catch-up with the consumer culture they helped to foster. Buy and believe. Find what works for you. Purveyors of spirituals and temporals alike ratchet up the “imperatives of comfort nestling modern women in a language of self-service.” “Self-service,” here, is pitch-perfect: Because you’re worth it. And by the way, you’re on your own. We’re now in Oprah’s world—“a world in which we find alluring the templates to which we are fitted,” as Jason Bivins gorgeously puts it, “a melancholy whose song of empowerment sells us resignation as the hope we know will be dashed.”

Next up, for you American Historical Association members, is Darren Dochuk's piece in the latest Perspectives, the monthly newsletter of the AHA: "Searching Out the Sacred in U.S. Political History." You'll have to be a member to get it online, or track it down in your library, and it's well worth the short read. Accompanying this, by the way, is the new anthology edited by Darren and Michelle Nickerson, Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Place, Space, and Region, another fine volume from the University of Pennsylvania Press' "Politics and Culture in Modern America" series. The volume includes Darren Grem's great piece (which we blogged about here before) "The Marketplace Missions of S. Truett Cathy, Chick-fil-A, and the Sunbelt South," and it also includes a statistical political science-y analysis of "Religion and Political Behavior in the Sunbelt."

And what would a week here at the blog be without a little discussion of hell. We noted before Lauren Winner's take on the Rob Bell Love Wins controversy; I neglected then to note Krista Tippett's take on the same, also in the Washington Post.

Finally, those of you who follow Religion Dispatches will know of Julie Ingersoll's fascinating work there tracing down the significant, if somewhat hidden, influence of Christian Reconstructionism on various aspects of the contemporary right, (she is currently, I believe, writing a book on said subject). See, for example, "Huckabee Channels Rushdoony," and "Reconstructionists Celebrate 'Ruling Over the Earth' Day."

Mark Oppenheimer discusses this further in his piece "Christian Economics Meets the Antiunion Movement," from the New York Times a couple of days ago. Aside from discussing the topic of Gary North's economic views, the article also gives a brief (and funny) history of the dysfunctional family history of "Christian Reconstructionism" from its intellectual godfather R. J. Rushdoony to its contemporary exponent North. If you have no idea what any of this is, here's a very brief summary, from the piece:

Mr. North, who is Mr. Rushdoony’s son-in-law but was not on speaking terms with him from 1981 until Mr. Rushdoony’s death, focuses on how that biblical libertarianism applies to economics. He concluded that the Bible forbids any welfare programs, is opposed to all inflation, and requires a gold-coin standard for money.

Oppenheimer's piece addresses the always difficult historical question of tracing influences. He writes:

Professor Ingersoll concedes it is difficult to prove direct connections between Mr. North’s writings and Wisconsin antiunion conservatism. On the other hand, Mr. North might like to think he has influenced the Wisconsin debate, and he has written in vociferous support of Gov. Scott Walker.

And, as Professor Ingersoll cautions, influence does not always announce itself:

“I like to say, ‘How many Christians know who is Augustine is, and how he influenced them?’ ”

Commemorating Haymarket

By Heath Carter

2011 is proving to be a challenging year for organized labor in America and yet also a year full of banner anniversaries. Just over a month ago I blogged about the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. This weekend, meanwhile, Chicagoans will mark the 125th anniversary of the notorious Haymarket Affair, which transpired at Randolph and Des Plaines Streets on 4 May 1886. The tragedy that unfolded that night had dramatic ramifications for the American labor movement, spelling the doom, of course, of the Knights of Labor. It had profound reverberations in the world of the religious elite as well, fueling Protestant nativism and a joint Protestant/Catholic backlash against anything that remotely hinted of radicalism. All this is well-attested in the literature. But we know much less about the religious dimensions of the Great Upheaval. The years prior to 1886 saw not only a dramatic spike in the incidents of strikes but also in working-class criticism of the churches, which wage earners perceived to be moving ever more into solidarity with capital. In late-nineteenth-century Chicago, notably, the working classes' critiques were often framed not in materialistic but rather distinctly Christian categories: Jesus was a carpenter and "the laborer is worthy of his hire" were two frequent refrains. More on this at some point soon, but in the meantime, here's an interesting NY Times article that discusses the anniversary in light of current controversies; and also a list of events that the Illinois Labor History society is sponsoring to commemorate the occasion, including Saturday's reenactment and re-dedication of the Haymarket monument in Forest Park, IL. If you know of other events in your area, please feel free to share in the comments section. Finally, for those who don't know about the excellent teaching resources available via the Chicago History Museum website, both the digital collection and Dramas of Haymarket are well worth a look.

ASCH Spring Meeting Wrap-Up

By Heath Carter

While considerably smaller than the ASCH's joint meeting with the American Historical Association, this year's spring meeting in Grand Rapids nevertheless showcased a lot of exciting work, some from senior practitioners in the guild but much of it from up-and-coming scholars. The two panels that I attended on Saturday exemplified the trend.

The first was entitled "Religion, Class, and American Elites." Peter Williams, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and American Studies at Miami University (Ohio), kicked things off with a learned paper on Episcopalianism and the "gospel of art" in the Progressive Era. Then followed two presentations by recent graduates of the history department at Notre Dame. Thomas Rzeznik, now an assistant professor at Seton Hall, revisited the Scott Nearing case, arguing that the economist's infamous confrontation with the trustees of the University of Pennsylvania in 1915 was about far more than academic freedom. The trustees dispensed with Nearing, Rzeznik contended, because his radical ideas challenged the moral and religious framework that helped elite Americans - including U Penn's benefactors - justify their disproportionate wealth. Finally, Timothy Gloege looked at how Henry Parsons Crowell, head of Quaker Oats, became not only a major player within the Moody Bible Institute at the turn of the century but also a key agent in the production of the Fundamentals. Gloege is now revising a fascinating dissertation on fundamentalism's early years, in which he highlights connections to big business, casting the movement not as an anti-modern backlash but instead as the theological handmaiden of emergent consumer capitalism. Overall, the panel left me wondering - as has my own work on Chicago - whether standard histories of this period overstate the significance and reach of the social gospel. More on that in a future post.

The second panel was entitled "Race, Religion, and Civil Rights." David Komline, one of my current colleagues at Notre Dame, delivered a paper examining the work of a German Jesuit who traveled through the United States in the immediate postbellum years, encouraging Germans and African Americans alike to establish their own parishes. Komline went on to complicate white-black binaries by considering the role that concerns about ethnicity played in the emergence of segregated Catholic churches. Karen Johnson, a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois (Chicago), then gave a very compelling talk on Arthur Falls and the roots of Catholic inter-racialism in Depression-era Chicago. I heard Johnson give a paper back in autumn, based on another chapter of what is shaping up to be a very impressive dissertation: her account underscores the power of the hierarchy with respect to racial questions but also highlights extensive and often countervailing activity on the ground throughout the long Civil Rights Movement.

All-in-all, then, a great meeting. The cherry on top: the 80 degree weather that made for a beautiful, windows-down ride back to Chicago on Sunday.

Black Mecca: African Muslims in Harlem

Paul Harvey

This book has been on my shelf for a little while, and I was hoping to get to it/blog about it early this summer. But in the meantime, Choice has a nice review of Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem (Oxford 2010). Since we're just today on the subject of mapping religious life in New York boroughs and neighborhoods, now's a good time to repost this review, for those interested.

Abdullah, Zain. Black Mecca: the African Muslims of Harlem. Oxford, 2010. 294p bibl index afp ISBN 0-19-531425-5, $35.00; ISBN 9780195314250, $35.00. Review

How do West African Muslim immigrants fit into the fabric of Harlem, and how have they challenged established notions of Islam, race, and cultural difference in one of the centers of black culture, thought, and politics? Abdullah (Temple Univ.) offers theoretically sophisticated and evocative answers to these questions in his ethnographic study of West African Muslims in Harlem. Combining descriptions of ethnographic encounters and personal narratives with insight from existing literature, chapters address West African immigrants' expectations of America before their migration, encounters between black and African identities, the challenges of mastering language(s), negotiating religious and cultural practices, and the changing notions of family and sexuality. Abdullah weaves these topics into a dense, vivid portrait of what he describes as new "Blues people" immersed in narratives of suffering, survival, and hope. He skillfully avoids one-sided representations and allows himself to consider different angles for each encounter he describes. Situated at the intersection of race studies, anthropology, and Islamic studies, this book is significant beyond its role as a study of American Muslims in advancing readers' understanding of migration, religious identities, and globalization through the lives of people in this particular community. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. -- J. Hammer, George Mason Universityed in 2011apr CHOICE.

Also, there is a longer, more extensive review of the book here; it emphasizes the economic struggles of these black immigrants. A brief excerpt: The mosques of Harlem are where immigrants go to maintain their bonds with each other and to find meaning in their struggles in America. What is significant in Professor Abdullah’s observations is the recasting of one’s economic plight as divine providence. Although many West African Muslims are not able to find the lucrative jobs they imagined, many set up their own shops or drive taxis in order to maintain the flexibility they need to adhere to their Islamic faith and values. In a sense, their work on the streets as an effort to inform people about and to maintain their deen is viewed as amal saalih or blessed work. The recasting of the Western immigrant plight in this manner connects immigrants back to their families and provides justification and hopefor an improved condition. A bit more about the book, from the Oxford U. Press website: The changes to U.S. immigration law that were instituted in 1965 have led to an influx of West African immigrants to New York, creating an enclave Harlem residents now call ''Little Africa.'' These immigrants are immediately recognizable as African in their wide-sleeved robes and tasseled hats, but most native-born members of the community are unaware of the crucial role Islam plays in immigrants' lives. Zain Abdullah takes us inside the lives of these new immigrants and shows how they deal with being a double minority in a country where both blacks and Muslims are stigmatized. Dealing with this dual identity, Abdullah discovers, is extraordinarily complex. Some longtime residents embrace these immigrants and see their arrival as an opportunity to reclaim their African heritage, while others see the immigrants as scornful invaders. In turn, African immigrants often take a particularly harsh view of their new neighbors, buying into the worst stereotypes about American-born blacks being lazy and incorrigible. And while there has long been a large Muslim presence in Harlem, and residents often see Islam as a force for social good, African-born Muslims see their Islamic identity disregarded by most of their neighbors. Abdullah weaves together the stories of these African Muslims to paint a fascinating portrait of a community's efforts to carve out space for itself in a new country.

Oprah: Spirituality, Mediation, and Consumption

Paul Harvey

Recently we posted a bit to point to you an interview with our favorite professor from Yale, Kathryn Lofton, on her new book Oprah: Gospel of an Icon.

Time for some more reading/discussion on the work, courtesy of two deeply probing pieces on the book posted at Immanent frame. First, David Morgan's "Spirituality, Mediation, and Consumption" notes that Kathryn Lofton’s fascinating study demonstrates that Oprah is not aping religion as a way of selling her product but conducting a practice of self-culture that appeals to many precisely because they believe it lifts them above their circumstances to reveal possibilities they had not imagined. Oprah’s genious is for achieving a coincidence of self-care, commoditization, mass-mediation, and entertainment. If that’s not modern religion, I don’t know what is.

Then you can move on to Deirdre English, "Will Oprah Winfrey Save Us All,"

There should be more to come in this series of posts.

Update: Salon has posted an interview with K. Lofton in which the author expresses some of the main ideas of her book in very accessible answers, and connects Oprah to a tradition of female preachers with ambiguous lives. Here's a little taste:

"I connect her to two figures -- George Whitefield, a prominent 18th century minister, and Charles Finney, a 19th century minister -- who weren't merely interested in spreading the gospel but also eliciting conversion. There's an idea that a gospel is true if the purveyor is willing to talk about how it's made. Oprah does that every time she does a show about "Oprah without makeup" or a confession about her weight gain -- this is her showing the strings of her own construction."

"The other tradition I connect her to is the emergence of women as evangelical preachers, who always had to be conscious that they were being somewhat insurrectionist to the Word by even being out in the public. Oprah tries to appeal to an audience that wants to see a successful and capable woman without being too perfect. She can't be too obnoxious in the face of the conservative domestic idea that we still have for women. So Oprah isn't married nor does she have children because if she had those things and was also trying to be Oprah, her audience would be uncomfortable. That she is free to minister only to them and is not responsible to a domestic life actually puts her in a long line of preachers with similarly ambiguous lives."

A Theological Crisis at the Heart of State Budget Crises

by Janine Giordano Drake

In the old days, states would balance their budgets by carefully managing their wealth held in property. Their means of acquiring more wealth was the state militia, and wealth, of course was, control over Indian territory. Indian land seizure could either result in fast money from speculators (usually represented by banks), or a slow, long term income stream garnered by renting to municipalities and land developers. When that was no longer easy, states sold exclusive government contracts to companies that traded with and in the state. What I want to argue here is that raising funds for state projects has never relied very much on taxed assets of the people. Today, however, we all have to decide whether it ought to be.

Only a tiny portion of state spending in this country comes from income taxes. Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming do not levy any state income taxes. New Hampshire and Tennessee tax only tax dividend and interest income. To me, the problem in budget-starving agricultural-heavy states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York and California is that states have never established the principle that effective ownership of land and other income-deriving assets requires services of a state to keep the assets in operation. These services include public servants from police forces and firefighters to teachers and municipal workers.

Cash-poor farmers have essentially been contending against urban service workers since the last Gilded Age over who ought to carry the heavier burden for public services. Henry George, who argued that poor people should not be fighting with one another but recognize the common adversary of those who own large amounts of natural resources, would turn over in his grave at the prospect of undermining organized workers' wages without taxing property owners. Together with Eugene Debs and many other land reformers, George worked hard to get poor farmers and farm workers to agree to hold their property in common in order to simulate the First Century Church (or some other equivalent utopia of peace through cooperation) and together reap the fruits of their labor. However, as Randall's recent post reminds us, pretty much all of these experimental communities failed.

Even though many Christian Socialists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century believed very strongly in George's concept of a single tax on the ownership of natural resources, Christian landowners put up just as big a fight, often by repositioning their theology of God's grace. Land provided to them through Indian conquest was often understood as a gift from God for the sake of Christian stewardship for one's family, not something borrowed from the state for the sake of the public, or, of course, stolen from Indians for the sake of power and hegemony. Landless and socialist Christians often fought back, criticizing landowners time and again for owning something that was ultimately not theirs but everyone's, and really God's. So, in the 1890s, landowning Populists began to talk about the main assets of their occupation as not land at all. Rather than engage in a business that exploited land and labor, these populists argued that they earned their living through the work of rain and sunshine--their bounty, therefore, was a gift from God.

Many farmers today still point to rain and sunshine (rather than land and labor) as the essential raw materials to their financial prosperity. International trade conditions still keep many farmers cash poor and therefore starved by higher state and municipal taxes on land. Farmers' comparatively low incomes (compared to their net worth if they own land) means that they bring in little income tax revenue to the state, compared to the federal and state subsidies that they use.

In many ways carrying out the Populist agenda, farmers and agribusiness have united to call themselves "growers," a maneuverer that accomplishes at least two political goals. First, it constructs the money-making asset of agricultural capitalists as the weather-cooperating-with-fertilizers, rather than ownership of the land in the first place. Secondly, it renders the agricultural labor required to harvest the crop as something apart from the act of farming. Therefore, "growers" have since the Depression received subsidies and tax breaks for providing food for the masses, but the migrant workers and other agricultural farm hands who do the grunt labor of harvest and farm maintenance are not even required to be paid a minimum wage, let alone a living wage with benefits or the dignity of calling oneself a farmer.

Starving states today rely primarily on revenue streams in sales taxes and a la carte fees for use of services (registrations and licenses, court filing fees, college tuition, tobacco taxes, gas taxes, etc)--in addition, of course, to large loans from banks--loans that bankers rarely complain about because states' inability to go bankrupt means banks' loans are virtually no risk.

Tying state revenue streams to general consumption and fees-for-use rather than pooled fruits of production is not only paralyzing state budgets in this new Gilded Age of poverty, wealth, and high unemployment (especially with tax laws to conserve the wealthy). Even more debilitating, it has established a myth that the state can operate independently of taxes on the production of its residents. Wisconsin never, of course, actually had a budget problem until Walker gave away so many tax breaks and contracts to his corporate sponsors. Wisconsin was in that respect an exception to the rule of starving state budgets over the last decade. However, we must admit that in handing out tax breaks and special contracts to growers and businesses, Walker was only doing what most state governors do.

I think Paul Grant is absolutely right when he talks about cooperation and consensus-building as essential cultural heritages of many working class Wisconsinites. This is not only confirmed in my research on Wisconsin socialists but helps me understand something I had been trying to figure out--why the Milwaukee atheist socialists and Christian Socialists I study feuded so terribly but still got along so well. Why, for example, Eugene Debs was not kicked out of leadership in the Social Democratic Party in 1897 when he was clearly in the minority in his belief in the possibility of establishing those Christian cooperative communes. Wisconsin socialists fought with Debs but, remarkably, kept him in charge. As Grant suggests, Scandinavian and German immigrants brought to Wisconsin not only a working class consciousness but a dense network of cultural institutions (gymnasiums, cultural clubs, churches, unions, freethinker clubs, political parties, etc) that served as schools for consensus building that would make such political and economic cooperation comfortable. I think Grant is also absolutely right that the national, conservative trend toward "brinksmanship" that Walker has recently employed in Wisconsin is to a large degree in tension with the cultural fabric of his state.

We all hate to admit it, though, but there are still many Wisconsinites who may believe in consensus building in rhetoric and demeanor but do not believe that public services should be paid for through their own pooled economic resources. Rural landowners around the country still resist tax hikes. This, I would argue, is the legacy of Populist rhetoric from the era of Indian landgrabbing: a belief that one's land is all one's own and not really a wealth-producing asset. It is a gift from God for oneself and one's family. State services, too, should be plentiful, but to Populists these should come from public revenue streams contributed to through fees-per-use and state provision, not state tithes on assets like land and income.

I find especially among evangelical Christians in the midwest a surprising combination of "Christian cooperativeness" in demeanor and rhetoric but real resistance to understanding one's income as anything but entirely one's own (and perhaps the Church's). Bethany Moreton's To Serve God and Walmart articulates and historicizes this tension so well.

To me, the referendum in all these state budget crises today is about where state revenue should come from when seizure and sale of state-contraband-territory is no longer as viable an option. Will we continue to find assets in the state's possession to exploit anew--like mines, quarries, aquifers and, err, government buildings, public parks, and guilds of municipal employees--or will we agree to issue higher state income taxes and property taxes, especially on those who can afford to pay more?

Furthermore, Madison is one of the hippest places for left-wing evangelical Christians to find each other. Will our present moment's resurgence of the virtues of communalism, the dangers of environmental destruction, and the violent legacy of settler colonialism stir a rebirth of nineteenth century Christian Socialist theologies? I think this Wisconsin battle may serve as a laboratory for American Christians reconsidering the difference between gifts provided to them and gifts provided in common.

Religion, Consensus, and Conflict in Wisconsin

Paul Harvey

A number of good pieces have analyzed the conflict over public unions and collective bargaining in Wisconsin from religious history perspectives. Some, such as Kim Bobo over at Religion Dispatches, have reproduced mainstream Protestant liberal and Catholic support for the workers, while our own Heath Carter has weighed in here more skeptically on the same issue. From the other side of the divide, Julie Ingersoll has investigated the justifications in Christian Reconstructionism for union-busting, and Diane Butler Bass explains Governor Scott Walker's evangelical surety (you Cheeseheads have Colorado Springs to thank for that, apparently, yet another gift we've given to the world). Over at Immanent Frame, John Boy's "The Cross and the Cheeseheads" summarizes much of this discussion and provides some other links as well.

But here is what I think is the best short piece on the religious angle of the story I have read on this: Paul Grant, "Neighbor Against Neighbor in Wisconsin," a succinct and eloquent essay on the passion about public order and public works that underlies this conflict (hat tip to Janine Giordano Drake and Seth Dowland for calling my attention to it). Just a brief excerpt:

In the 1870s, waves of Scandinavians and Germans came, motivated this time by poverty. These were the builders, the people who brought their Northern European instincts for consensus-building and cooperation to bear on their projects. It is because of them that Wisconsin is stacked with credit unions, farmers markets, co-ops of every variety, native grass seed exchanges, strong public libraries, and impressive music departments in tiny rural high schools. Largely Lutheran and Catholic, the bedrock Wisconsin way of doing culture is to blur the boundaries between public and private . . .

Why does this matter? It helps explain the anger of the moment. We are seeing a collision of distinct traditions of political conversation—one grounded in mainstream American traditions of brinkmanship, and another drawing on midwestern traditions of consensus-building. It is not insignificant that Governor Walker was born in Colorado Springs to a Baptist minister: he represents national political cultures.

It's often pointed out that Wisconsin gave us both Robert LaFollette and Joseph McCarthy, so this "brinksmanship" is certainly not entirely new; and of course serious labor conflict in Wisconsin and elsewhere is not new either. Nonetheless, Grant's piece helped me understand something of the way this movement has combined passion and order, and also something more about the religious motivations undergirding Governor Walker and his supporters.

Update: Janine Giordano is working on her own piece on the Wisconsin issue as well as a response to Grant, so with any luck that will be up here soon!

Constitutional Fundamentalism, Minus Some of the Fundamentals

Paul Harvey

My piece at Religion Dispatches, posted yesterday, reflects on the meaning of "original intent" after the reading of the Constitution in the House of Representatives Thursday. What does it mean to treat the Constitution as "sacred," but skip over the parts in which the original intent of an entirely different era leaves us uncomfortable, not unlike reading passages from any number of other sacred scriptures? Read it here. A short taste here:

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

As the 112th Congress convened on Thursday, January 6, 2011, the first order of business was a religious ritual designed to underscore the import of a historic transition of power: a reading of the US Constitution. Or rather, a reading of it without some of its ickier original parts, such as the original fugitive slave provision quoted above. It was constitutional fundamentalism without some of the fundamentals.

Julie Ingersoll's post, also at Religion Dispatches, reflects in a similar fashion on the reading. John Fea weighs in here.

Labor in the Pulpit

Paul Harvey

For this Labor Day, here's a whole host of links, pdf printouts, reprinted statements, and aids to "Labor in the Pulpit," from our friends at Interfaith Worker Justice. Included, for example, is the link to this piece by Jennifer Butler at the Washington Post's "On Faith" site, which provides this helpful set of followups:

Along with the Catholic Church's centuries-old commitment to labor rights, many faith-based social justice groups are leading the fight for fair wages and corporate accountability across the country. Interfaith Worker Justice, a Chicago-based national advocacy organization, has played an indispensable role drawing attention to wage theft - the illegal underpayment or non-payment of workers. Each year, wage theft affects millions of workers, often forcing them to choose between paying rent and putting food on the table. Since 1996, through a Labor in the Pulpits program, thousands of congregations across the country have focused their Labor Day weekend services on the injustices faced by low-wage workers. Groups such as the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and Jewish Funds for Justice support local organizations that empower workers and advocate for policies that protect working families. PICO National Network, a national network of faith-based community organizations, plays an important role mobilizing people of faith to pressure financial institutions to end predatory lending and strengthen low-income neighborhoods through sound economic development. And unlike today's Tea Party movement and other anti-government zealots, faith groups affirm the essential role government has in serving the common good and protecting those who are most vulnerable to market downturns.

Here's an announcement and statement about the day by Interfaith Worker Justice:|

Lifting up Workers on Labor Day Weekend
Religious and Labor Leaders Voice Shared Concerns through Labor in the Pulpits

In the richest country in the world, more than two million full-time workers live below the poverty line, struggling to pay for necessities like food, housing, healthcare, transportation, and childcare. In the face of this scandal, Interfaith Worker Justice provides a prophetic voice.

Labor Day is a time for the religious community and the labor movement not only to celebrate working people and their contributions to society but to remember the struggles that workers endured to achieve the many benefits we now enjoy but take for granted: the eight-hour day, workers’ compensation, overtime pay, pensions, health and safety laws, Social Security, Medicare, vacation days, unemployment compensation, family medical leave, a restriction on child labor, a minimum wage and the right to organize for collective bargaining. These benefits helped to humanize the workplace and to provide a safety net for millions.

For the last 15 years, thousands of congregations have focused their Labor Day weekend services on the injustices facing low-wage workers and the religious community's efforts to support those workers' struggles for living wages and family-sustaining benefits.

This Labor Day weekend, over 1,000 Labor in the Pulpits/on the Bimah/in the Minbar services will be held across the country.

“Labor in the Pulpits expresses in a very clear way the bonds between religion and labor,” says IWJ Executive Director Kim Bobo. Those bonds are even stronger this year, says Bobo, “as we stand poised to bring about real change in our country, from reforming health care to stopping wage theft and making our workplaces more democratic.”

Labor in the Pulpits offers a series of litanies, responsive readings, reflections, and interfaith prayer service guides. New materials added this year include a Muslim worship aid, a Jewish reflection, prayers and readings on the rights of workers.

Christianity, Crashes, and Special Experiences

Paul Harvey

Good stuff over at Immanent Frame:

First, a little follow-up on Darren's post from yesterday: "Christianity and the Crash," collects a number of scholarly responses to Hanna Rosin's article "Did Christianity Cause the Crash," from the December 2009 Atlantic. Our friends Anthea Butler and Jon Walton weigh in, along with Mark Taylor, Harvey Cox, and several others. Most point to the longevity and durability of the "prosperity gospel," and explore the issue in deeper ways than is possible in a magazine piece. I like Jon Walton's take:

To assert the relationship as causal, as several articles have, grants way too much credit to a motley crew of preachers while shifting our attention away from destructive governmental deregulatory policies and the pernicious speculatory financial practices of Wall Street. The financial sophistication of most of the prosperity preachers still remains at the level of how to collect more crumbled dollar bills in the bucket on Sunday. And, like most Americans, I am pretty sure Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar have little understanding of a derivative bubble or the implications of repealing the Glass Steagall Act. . . . . It seems there is plenty of blame to go around here. And I would prefer to start at the top and not the bottom.

The Study of Special Experiences: An Interview with Ann Taves, Nathan Schneider's interview with AAR President Ann Taves, explores the intersections in Taves's work between "religion" and "experience," and more broadly between the humanistic study of religion and the biological study of human experience. A brief excerpt:

NS: Why do you begin with the category of experience?

AT: For much of the twentieth century, scholars of religion considered “religious experience” central to the study of religion. In the last 20 years or so that approach came in for sharp criticism. Many scholars wanted to get away from it because it seemed to suggest an experiential essence of religion and turned instead to analyzing discourses about experience. But I don’t think we can afford to throw experience out, because embodied experience is where culture and biology meet.

NS: How can experience be resuscitated?

AT: I argue for a few basic moves. First of all, we have to take religious experience apart, to disaggregate it. Rather than “religious experience,” we can talk about “experiences deemed religious.” This better takes into account the process of how we make sense of experience—as religious or not—at many different levels, not all of them conscious. Next, I locate experience under the broader heading of consciousness studies, ranging from highly reflective, self-aware meta-consciousness to unconscious processes. Once we can put experience in that kind of framework, it is possible to look at the interpretive processes, or what I call attributional processes, to understand how certain kinds of experiences in certain kinds of contexts come to be understood as religious. I also explore what it means to ascribe or attribute religiousness to an experience across cultures and times, even in contexts where people aren’t using the word “religion” or some obviously related term to describe their experience.

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?

Wise Blood, and Killing for Coal Dust

Paul Harvey

You Flannery O'Connor fans unite and get on those Netflix accounts -- John Huston's excellent 1980 film adaptation of Wise Blood, based of course on the short O'Connor novel, is now out on DVD. I saw this twenty years ago or so, can't wait to see it again, as I recall it well capturing the astringent O'Connor at her best.

The same summer I saw Wise Blood, I viewed a number of short documentaries about religion and laboring lives in the extractive industries. Religion and labor remains a subject in need of much more exploration. I was pondering this most recently while reading this year's Bancroft prize winner in History, Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War, a work ostensibly about the Ludlow Massacre of 1914 but, in reality, about the transformational power of coal in Colorado and western history. Coal, the author Thomas Andrews argues, induced a worldwide migration that left the more fabled gold and silver migrations in the dust, literally and figuratively.

Coal was a God which made its presence felt on the environment, in people's lives and lungs, and in the bitterness of a class society which belied the aspirations and ideals of the Quaker founder of the idealistic colony of Colorado Springs, General William Palmer. Coal was essential to his vision, and coal destroyed his vision.

Thomas Andrews has written an astonishingly powerful book. In his synthesis of environmental and labor history, coal is a powerful god-like force, and the relationship of the colliers to their environment was one of respectful fear and awe (best seen in how the colliers used the mice they befriended as their own canaries in the coal mine; when the mice scampered away unexpectedly, the men know something was amiss).

I was hoping for a bit more in Killing for Coal about religion and the multiethnic labor force that descended on the southern Colorado coal fields -- not a criticism of the book, just something I missed. I'm therefore doubly grateful for Richard Callahan's new book Work and Faith in the Kentucky Coal Fields: Subject to Dust, which is featured as the book of the week at Books and Culture (review courtesy of our own K. Lofton).

Here's an excerpt from the review, which shows the promise of combining the forces of religious and labor history in a way that Thomas Andrews accomplishes with his synthesis of environmental and labor history:

Callahan offers a lively picture of everyday life in coal towns populated by a microcosm of early 20th century American demography, including Hungarians, Italians, Slavs, Poles, Mexicans, Russians, Syrians, and Romanians. Within this multicultural panorama a rough peace abided. For instance, according to one miner, "The Jews were very much hated people." Yet Jews managed many of the stores that defined the incoming modernism of that era. "Along with the commodification of labor and the ready availability of consumer items," Callahan writes, "coal towns also introduced new patterns of leisure time that larger company towns tried to structure through organized, often commodified, forms of entertainment." At the same moment when modernism and fundamentalism were embattled elsewhere, southern Appalachian religious leaders sought to civilize their flocks through increased domestic consumption and ritual diminishment. One modernist Baptist pastor, for example, discouraged the ritual of foot-washing. "Doing away with [foot washing]," Callahan explains, "was a sign of the distancing of modern Baptists from closely heeding to their physical body, and the bodies of others in the community, as rich sources of religious experience."

Perhaps in reply to these modernist incursions, Holiness and Pentecostal movements enjoyed rampant success among the mining communities. Chapter 5 of Work and Faith in the Kentucky Coal Fields supplies a "synthetic and speculative" discussion about Holiness religion's emergence and popularity in the coal fields. Due to the limited documentary material, Callahan relies upon Raymond Williams' cultural theory, along with studies of the Holiness movement where the record was stronger, to explain why Holiness found such a strong footing amidst the horizontal mines of eastern Kentucky. This is a moving chapter, especially in its explanatory reading of healing as a popular ritual among miners. "When I can feel him coming into my body," one southern Appalachian believer said, "I know God is real." The somatic repeatedly appears in Callahan's study as he seeks to recover the palpable and the felt aspects of religious lives. "The event of healing," he writes, "made the power of the Holy Ghost concrete and present to witnesses and the person healed." This was a "somatic form of knowledge of the material reality of divine power and its ability to transform the world physically." In short, the laboring affect may have been particularly conducive to Holiness effects.

God's Work: What Can Faith-Based Activism Do For Labor?

Paul Harvey

A few days ago we put up a couple of posts about Jon Shields's important new book Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right. In the interests of being fair and balanced, and in the spirit of Dorothy Day, today we're moving on to rewnewed hopes for a recognition in public policy of the democratic virtues of the Christian Left.

Nancy MacLean (author of the great book Freedom is Not Enough) has posted a compelling piece at the Boston Review -- "God's Work: What can Faith-Based Activism Do For Labor"? She begins,

“I came to Washington to work for God, FDR, and the millions of forgotten, plain, common workingmen,” recalled Frances Perkins. And so she did. From 1933 to 1945, Perkins helped create the core features of the New Deal state: minimum wage and maximum hours laws, legal guarantees for workers’ rights to organize and join unions, prohibition of child labor, Social Security, unemployment compensation, and fair labor standards. For all of the New Deal’s limitations, its laws and programs tamed Upton Sinclair’s “Jungle,” encouraged broad economic security and prosperity, and created, in economic terms, the most equitable America in history. And it was promoted and protected not only by strong unions but also by religious leaders, thanks to the prominence of a social gospel in the Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish traditions at mid-century. During her twelve years as secretary of labor, Perkins herself spent one day a month in contemplative retreat at a convent. For her, the reference to God was not simply a rhetorical flourish.

Since the 1970s economic inequality has surged to levels not seen since the 1920s, Dickensian abuses of workers have returned, and deregulation has enabled the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. President Obama’s Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, faces challenges not unlike Perkins’s. Yet today, as in the 1930s, crisis also creates the opportunity for a bold new direction—a New New Deal, potentially more inclusive of the nation’s diverse labor force than Perkins could have imagined. Might the nation’s churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples again have a role in rescuing a wayward economy?

In addressing this question, Solis can learn much from Kim Bobo, founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ). Bobo’s goal is to revive America’s justice-seeking prophetic tradition, with a particular focus on economic justice. In her new book, Wage Theft in America, Bobo argues powerfully for the importance of community allies in improving struggling workers’ lives. She aims to rouse believers from all faith traditions to a new sense of social mission. Her starting point, and the focus of her book, is to address a more specific challenge: “why millions of working Americans are not getting paid and what we can do about it.” The charge is not an exaggeration. Using Department of Labor settlements (which her organization has done much to win), Bobo documents how companies steal literally billions of dollars from millions of workers each year.

Bobo, MacLean explains, "understands that wage theft is a strategic issue that could jumpstart an overhaul of the Department of Labor, help to shut down the low road, and importantly, reanimate progressive politics with the social-gospel spirit." Bobo and groups such as IWJ come from a long tradition of

commitment to social justice in the Catholic and Jewish traditions and the Protestant social gospel that drove so much Progressive Era and New Deal reform. . . . 'We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,' FDR noted in 1937, 'we now know that it is bad economics.' ” We have relearned the truth that it is bad economics, but we still await the moral awakening.

The Church After the Bubble

Paul Harvey

J. Nelson Seawright, "The Church and the Debt Bubble," considers the impact of the real estate bubble and crash on Mormon church financing. A short excerpt:

Now that U.S. Mormons are no longer realizing, and paying tithing on, fantastic and unsustainable capital gains from stock and housing sales, but are instead paying more strictly on family income which has not really changed much at the median since the 1980s, is the church overcommitted? It costs money to run temples, wards, stakes, etc., and the fact that construction has been far outpacing the rates of missionary growth or growth of relatively high-tithing U.S. members hints at something like a baseball-baptisms-era if-you-build-it-they-will-come strategy. If so, we might be facing something of a debt-bubble hangover of our own…

I know nothing about LDS church financing, but found this a fascinating post, and one that is a case study of how the economic crash/correction will impact church life in the U.S. I would be interested to see other examples of serious considerations of how American religious life will respond to the Crash of 08-09. Surely church-related colleges and universities are in for some hard decisions? I don't know, really, I'm just saying . . .

Religion and Politics in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century

by Phillip Luke Sinitiere


Jonathan Walton, assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside, has just published Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism with NYU Press.

Here's more:

Through their constant television broadcasts, mass video distributions, and printed publications, African American religious broadcasters have a seemingly ubiquitous presence in popular culture. They are on par with popular entertainers and athletes in the African American community as cultural icons even as they are criticized by others for taking advantage of the devout in order to subsidize their lavish lifestyles.

For these reasons questions abound. Do televangelists proclaim the message of the gospel or a message of greed? Do they represent the “authentic” voice of the black church or the Christian Right in blackface? Does the phenomenon reflect orthodox “Christianity” or ethnocentric “Americaninity” wrapped in religious language?

Watch This! seeks to move beyond such polarizing debates by critically delving into the dominant messages and aesthetic styles of African American televangelists and evaluating their ethical implications.

With an early focus on Rev. Ike and initial versions of the prosperity message, Walton places the contemporary phenomenon of black religious broadcasting in historical perspective, demonstrating that the types of syncretic and sensational black Christian practices witnessed on today's airwaves have been brewing within African American storefronts and on black religious radio for the majority of the twentieth century. He goes on to illumine the diversity of theology and social thought among popular black religious broadcasters in order to delineate the differences among figures often lumped together as monolithic.

In so doing, Watch This! provides a principled ethical analysis that situates televangelists against a larger cultural backdrop, evaluating them according to their own self-understandings and ecclesial agendas. From T.D. Jakes to Bishop Eddie Long to Pastor Creflo Dollar, Walton argues that despite their emphasis on social and economic advancement in the African American community, these leaders ministries frustrate their own liberatory aims and unwittingly reinforce class, racial, and gender injustices in America.

Such a nuanced examination of black religious broadcasting is certain to enrich our understanding of this prevalent and pervasive form of popular and political culture.


A regular writer for Religion Dispatches, you should check out his blog as well.


In other news, Billy Graham is the subjct of a new book by Steven P. Miller. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press, Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South situates the noted evangelist in the South in order to explore his role in the politics of the region and the nation as a whole.


Here's more:

While spreading the gospel around the world through his signature crusades, internationally renowned evangelist Billy Graham maintained a visible and controversial presence in his native South, a region that underwent substantial political and economic change in the latter half of the twentieth century. In this period Graham was alternately a desegregating crusader in Alabama, Sunbelt booster in Atlanta, regional apologist in the national press, and southern strategist in the Nixon administration.

Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South considers the critical but underappreciated role of the noted evangelist in the creation of the modern American South. The region experienced two significant related shifts away from its status as what observers and critics called the "Solid South": the end of legalized Jim Crow and the end of Democratic Party dominance. Author Steven P. Miller treats Graham as a serious actor and a powerful symbol in this transition—an evangelist first and foremost, but also a profoundly political figure. In his roles as the nation's most visible evangelist, adviser to political leaders, and a regional spokesperson, Graham influenced many of the developments that drove celebrants and detractors alike to place the South at the vanguard of political, religious, and cultural trends. He forged a path on which white southern moderates could retreat from Jim Crow, while his evangelical critique of white supremacy portended the emergence of "color blind" rhetoric within mainstream conservatism. Through his involvement in the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations, as well as his deep social ties in the South, the evangelist influenced the decades-long process of political realignment.

Graham's public life sheds new light on recent southern history in all of its ambiguities, and his social and political ethics complicate conventional understandings of evangelical Christianity in postwar America. Miller's book seeks to reintroduce a familiar figure to the narrative of southern history and, in the process, examine the political and social transitions constitutive of the modern South.

Markets and Morality Conference Report

"Did you ever wake up to find/A day that broke up your mind . . . It's just that demon life/has got you in its sway." Yes, from "Sway," my favorite Stones song. And yes, pretty much a description of my last week, between health problems, scrambled trips, and general chaos, so excuse the lack of blog entries.

In the meantime, thanks to Kate Carte Engel for this report from the Markets and Morality Conference recently held at the Library Company of Philadelphia, which I blogged about in September. It sounds like it was a blessedly rational event; just reading about it calmed me down. In the near future I hope to host a blog "interview" with Prof. Engel on her new book Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America. Until then, here's her first of what I hope will be other guest posts.
_____________________________________

MARKETS AND MORALITY CONFERENCE
by KATHERINE CARTE ENGEL

Religion and the economy has been a recurrent subject for this blog, so perhaps readers will be interested to hear a report of a recent conference held in Philadelphia. Market and Morality: Intersections of Economy, Ethics, and Religion in Early North America, the seventh annual conference of the Library Company of Philadelphia’s Program in Early American Economy and Society offered participants both lively discussion and interesting papers on a timeless subject.
The PEAES Program, steered by the University of Delaware’s Cathy Matson, fosters scholarship on diverse aspects of the early American economy and the wider culture that surrounded it. It has become a focal point for new and methodologically innovative work on early America, and its attention to the study of religion in the early American economy points to the vitality of that field.

As one commentator noted, Max Weber and Perry Miller were present as the elephants in the room, but panelists tried to work beyond (and sometimes with) them to build new paradigms of the study of religion in the economy. No single theory emerged as victor. but speakers covered topics as diverse as seventeenth-century Quaker merchants (Kristen Block), Puritan economic thought (Mark Valeri), and the controversies over early nineteenth-century turnpikes in New England (Jason Opal). Multiple historiographical approaches were brought to bear on the subject. Jose Torre offered a grand intellectual narrative that swept from Plato to the early republic. Holly Snyder used synagogue records and merchant ledgers to examine how Jews infused their economic lives with spiritual content. Opal delved into the town records of early national New England. Quite obviously, the diversity of approaches to this subject underlies the difficulty of coming to one, satisfactory theory to explain it.

Perhaps a better metric for understanding religion in the early American economy is the range of recurring themes in the conference’s discussion, topics marking the issues that Americans did battle with in their efforts to make spiritual sense of their economic lives: the shifting definition of providence, the nature of free will, and the meaning of sacrifice. These are theological questions but they were practical ones too for the people studied here. At the same time, in this effort to blend two very different subjects, political economy, the nature of the body politic, and the realities of transatlantic trade in the age of sail played an equally important role. In the concluding discussion, reminders to bring God back into the conversation alternated with those calls to remember political realities under which people lived.

The University of Connecticut’s Christopher Clark concluded the day with a discussion he described as a “wealth of notions.” He noted the marked drift over the last twenty-five years away from viewing markets as hostile forces. He pointed out that this beneficent view of the economy--perhaps a relic of the boom years that he dated as from 1983 to about last week--underlay most of the papers, which looked for accommodations between religious actors and economic situations, rather than core conflict between religion and economy. Yet wide-ranging discussion that followed highlighted how difficult it can be for historians to keep both of these subjects in mind at once. In short, no answers were to be had, but the breadth of scholars represented points to a fruitful discussion to come. The papers for the conference are available on the conference website.