Religion and Humor

BY MICHAEL PASQUIER

Josh Paddison, American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow at Indiana University, is an historian of religion in the American West. His manuscript, "American Heathens: Religion, Race, and Reconstruction in California," will be published by the University of California Press in the not-too-distant future. He is also the editor of A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California before the Gold Rush (1999).

Like all scholars (I hope), Paddison does more than read, write, and teach. He also draws comics, in this case for the blog Occasional Religion, which serves as a kind of forum for "scholars and artists engaging the world." Paddison's latest installment in the series "Moments in U.S. Religious History" recounts a play performed by three Chinese immigrants at the Methodist Mission in San Francisco. You can see/read it here. In an earlier comic strip, Paddison portrays an 1859 interview between Horace Greeley and Brigham Young.

Good stuff! Thanks Josh!

How a Notre Dame Professor Became Irish

by Kathleen Sprows Cummings

My Irish citizenship papers arrived this week. By virtue of having a grandparent born in Ireland, my siblings and I were eligible to apply for this status, and I responded enthusiastically to my sister's proposal that we pursue this opportunity (especially when she volunteered to do all the research and paperwork, which involved, among other tasks, tracking down a birth certificate for a man who was born in rural Ireland in 1899). I'll admit I was enticed by the prospect of easy travel that an EU passport would permit. But mostly I agreed for very sentimental reasons, grateful for the chance to remember and honor my family's immigrant past. So I prepared the application with a light heart and little reflection.

You would think I would have known better. I am, after all, writing a book about citizenship, religion, and national identity, so I should have known that actually becoming an Irish "citizen of foreign birth" would evoke conflicting and complicated emotions. While I am glad to have this new connection to my past, I also deplore the way that many Americans--Irish and otherwise--romanticize Ireland and its culture. When I see the elaborate celebrations that mark St. Patrick's Day, I cannot help but call to mind Margaret Atwood's critique of "ye olde country shoppes.": "History, as I recall, was never this winsome, and especially not this clean, but the real thing would never sell: most people prefer a past in which nothing smells. "

Ireland's past has plenty of smells, and many of them are unpleasant. The experience of migration intensified some of the worst of it, and the history of Irish Catholicism in the United States has a dark side that all the spritely leprechauns and shamrocks in the world may mask but never erase. For specifics, read CLOSING TIME, Joe Queenan's haunting and beautiful memoir about growing up in a working-class Irish-American community in Philadelphia. Though my own family's experience has nothing of the horrors chronicled by Queenan, I have read and experienced enough of Irish-American culture to appreciate the pervasiveness of the violence, alcoholism, repression and tragedy which he describes.

I know my grandfather, were he still alive, would be puzzled, if not angry, at our choice to become Irish citizens. My grandmother, also an immigrant, retained a strong attachment to Ireland and visited as often as she could. But my grandfather returned only rarely and reluctantly. Though poverty and hardship were part and parcel of his early life in the United States, he never regretted the choice to leave Ireland. Here he found work, met my grandmother, owned a house, and had five children, and he was perpetually grateful for all that his adopted land had given him. He lived until age ninety-five--something he insisted would never have been possible had he stayed.

Yesterday one of my colleagues, who can trace his lineage back to the Mayflower, expressed his envy of my status as one of Ireland's newest "citizens of foreign birth." But surely he wouldn't exchange his family's three-century head start on education and the accumulation of wealth for the proprietary glow I will feel later today when I lift my pint of Guinness in celebration of Ireland's patron? I was reflecting on this last night as I was baking my grandmother's scone, wondering whether my decision to become an Irish citizen was less of an act of remembering than it was of forgetting.

Latest Research Shows Whig View of American Religious History A Little More Problematic Than I Thought

Paul Harvey

Still clinging to that Whig interpretation of history? You know the one -- we go through tough times, but things get better, people improve, perceptions shift, intolerance gives way to pluralism, falsehoods are put away, stocks go up in the long run, bigotries have to go into hiding, people cultivate their own gardens and don't try to burn other ones down, we learn from our mistakes, enemies reconcile, etc. Full disclosure: that's stuff I basically believe in my heart of hearts.

Here's a little cold water on that rosy-hued view:

Now comes fresh evidence of misperceptions about the president taking root in the public mind: a new poll by the Pew Research Center finds a substantial rise in the percentage of Americans who believe, incorrectly, that Mr. Obama is Muslim. The president is Christian, but 18 percent now believe he is Muslim, up from 12 percent when he ran for the presidency and 11 percent after he was inaugurated. [note: this poll was taken BEFORE the recent ground zero mosque pseudo-event].

Moreover, according to the poll, about 1/4th of Americans are certified "birthers," and who knows how many others kinda sorta think that way. I realize 10% of people will believe just about anything. I realize a lot of people, including a large number of U.S. Senators, perpetrated the death panel myth, and well over 50% don't understand or "believe in" some pretty basic scientific concepts, starting with evolution and going on from there. But still, the 1/4th figure on something like this was in the category of things that make you go hmmm.

The article considers the possibility that the increasing number of people who believe this complete horsesh(BEEP) is because because Mr. Obama is doing a poor job of communicating who he is and what he believes.

Possibly true that, to a certain degree. Or maybe people are just getting stupider. I report, you decide.

Just a little more seriously: I recently concluded an essay for a forthcoming publication with a very smiley-face happy set of paragraphs on the rise of religious pluralism in very recent American history, throwing some props George W. Bush's way for some of his strongly affirming statements about Islam after 09/11 in contrast to events in the past (internment of Japanese Americans, etc.). The peer reviewers for that particular piece pointed out some obvious evidence to the contrary -- Guantanamo, attacks on mosques and people who looked vaguely Middle Eastern even though they were actually Sikhs, and so on and on. All true, all disheartening, and I could have written an essay concluding with the opposite point from what I argued easily enough. But, I was speaking from a comparative historical perspective -- compared to the past, things were not perfect, but they were better.

The recent spasm of hyperbolic bigotry, and stories like the above, leave me a little more sour than the Whiggish end to my essay (it's in press, so can't change it now!). So I'll try to improve my mood by surveying the recent edited collection of essays African Immigrant Religions in America, which we've noted on the blog before -- and so far, it's an extremely informative collection of essays which covers everything from Ethiopian Orthodoxy to Nigerian Muslims to Ghanian Pentecostalism.

More immediately, though, I have to celebrate the advent of a true miracle, something you don't see every day: Colorado Springs' first Ethiopian restaurant! And (by all accounts) a great one. Even better, the name of the place is Uchenna, which means "God's Will."

Having spent my first two years of grad. school, a million years ago, living about a 2 minute walk to three fantastic outposts (and several other pretty good if not quite fantastic outposts) of East African cuisine, I got a little spoiled, admittedly. Even more spoiling, the owner of one of those places used to give me her leftovers (bottom of the stew pot, all that stuff simmering for 24 hours -- possibly the best food I've ever eaten in my life), all nicely packaged in a styrofoam box. I think she thought I was a homeless drifter, when in fact I was a graduate student. What's the difference, you ask? Well, let's just say, I didn't really visit the laundry mat all that often in those days. I saved those quarters for a treat of tibbsi, alicha wat, and some honey wine.

And yes, every other civilized place got their nice Ethiopian restaurants ten or twenty or thirty years ago, and in reality it wasn't all that far to drive to Denver's versions of doro wat and kitfo. Nonetheless, just thinking about having to drive just a few minutes to get my fix of homemade injera cheers me up. Things will work out soon, things will come round again. Keep hope alive, peoples.

This Land is My Land, You Got That?

Randall Stephens

Peter Marshall has long kept an active commentary page on his petermarshallministries.com site. He's mad as hell and he's not going to take it any more! (He seems to have been mad as hell for a for some time now, so this is not a news flash.)

Marhsall is the author of The Light and the Glory, now revised, a Christian bookstore bestseller and a staple of homeschooling curriculum. (John Fea has written a cogent essay and several posts on Marshall and his career.) Marshall, along with another popular Christian historian David Barton, served as a history curriculum adviser for the Texas State Board of Education. Of that development, Fea wrote: "Someone on the Texas Board of Education must really like Marshall. This is the only way to explain how a Presbyterian pastor from New England with no formal training in history became an expert reviewer for the Social Studies standards for one of the largest states in the Union."

So, I paste here part of Marshall's recent post on Islam. (Could Marshall and Diana L. Eck have a beer summit to talk over the nature of American religion?)

Peter Marshall, "Islam's War with the West: The Need for Reality -- Part Two," 7/22/2010.

This week's commentary begins, then, with this question: When it comes to the reality of Islam in America, can a good or devout Muslim be a good American?

No. The answer, my friends, is a flat "no!" The only Muslim that could possibly be a good American is a Muslim that is non-practicing, or one that is in the process of repudiating Islam. Why? Because Islam is completely incompatible with either Christianity or patriotic Americanism. read on>>>

Religion and the Arizona Immigration Law

Randall Stephens

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly features a discussion on the Arizona immigration business. Bob Abernethy speaks with Tucson Catholic Bishop Gerald Kicanas. (This makes me wonder about conversations that took place in California in the early 1990s concerning a similar proposed law.)

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: In Arizona, tough new immigration law is prompting widespread protest from many in the religious community. It requires police in the state to check the status of anyone they suspect may be in the country illegally. To protest it many in the faith community have designated this weekend as a special time for prayer for immigrants. Among those condemning the law are the US Catholic bishops, who have long lobbied for comprehensive immigration reform.

We want to talk now with one bishop on the frontline of the battle. He is Gerald Kicanas, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson Arizona. Bishop, welcome. Several lawsuits were filed this week, more are promised, more are in the works, some of them from clergy. Where does the Church stand on this? Are you going to try to stop this bill, this law?

BISHOP GERALD KICANAS (Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson, Arizona): Even the Arizona legislators, Bob, are considering modifications to the bill, which suggests that they themselves are concerned about how it could be misinterpreted. So there will be legal action, certainly, and we’ll monitor that and participate where we feel it would be appropriate.

ABERNETHY: Do you think the church might become a party to the lawsuits to try to stop the bill?

BISHOP KICANAS: I don’t know that we’ll be bringing the lawsuits forward. Those will be brought forward by, certainly, others, but we will review those, and perhaps being a friend of the court where it would be appropriate. >>> read on/watch

Immigration and Religion in America

Paul Harvey

Surveying the books reviewed in the new Journal of American History gives a quick overview of the variety and vitality of American religious history. From the eighteenth-century Moravians, to Catholic feminism, to W. E. B. DuBois, to Holiness/Pentecostalism, to the memory of the Salem witch trials, to religion in the life of George Washington, and much else instead, even a quick scan and assessment of these newer titles suggests continued strength in the field.

Here's a title I was completely unaware of, and haven't seen yet, but looks promising:

Immigration and Religion in America: Comparative and Historical Perspectives. Ed. by Richard Alba, Albert J. Raboteau, and Josh DeWind. (New York: New York University Press, 2009. vi, 407 pp. Cloth, $78.00, ISBN 978-0-8147-0504-9. Paper, $26.00, ISBN 978-0-8147-0505-6.)

The book pairs comparisons of earlier and more-studied immigrant groups (Italians, Japanese, Jews, and northward-migrating African Americans) with newer immigrant communities (Mexicans, Koreans, Arab Muslims, and Haitians). Each pairing comes with an introduction focusing on the religious history of the groups. Here's a bit more, from the review (access required for History Cooperative):

Several essays stand out. The sociologist David Lopez's "Whither the Flock? The Catholic Church and the Success of Mexicans in America" argues that, unlike the Italian case, "it is difficult to point to any important ways in which the church has facilitated their climb up the ladder of success" for Latino Catholics (p. 71). In "The Shaping of Arab and Muslim Identity in the United States," however, Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad shows evidence of Islam facilitating the acculturation of Muslim Arabs—much as Judaism did for Jews—by providing women the opportunity to participate in public life. Elizabeth McAlister and Karen Richman's "Catholic, Vodou, and Protestant: Being Haitians, Becoming American—Religious Pluralism, Immigrant Incorporation, and Transnationalism" illustrates the complicated ways that varied religious traditions and history provide meaning for Haitians in a new land.
Two essays challenge the notion that declining participation in religious rituals means that immigrant religious roots are less important to later generations. Despite the decline of traditional Buddhism among the Japanese, Jane Naomi Iwamura's "Critical Faith: Japanese Americans and the Birth of a New Civil Religion" argues that "what has emerged from the collective experience of war and internment is a faith that is tied to no particular religious tradition but that takes racial-ethnic identity as its starting points" (p. 137). Calvin Goldscheider's "Immigration and the Transformation of American Jews: Assimilation, Distinctiveness, and Community" suggests that for Jews the issue is not how much they have assimilated but "what factors sustain ethnic and religious community" (p. 198). He argues that the economic stratification of education and occupation, built on the demography of the first generation, allows this immigrant group to challenge the assumption that Jews (as a group) have become secularized in America.

The Evangelical Complexion

At The Immanent Frame, Joel Carpenter asks what will be the effect of immigration on the social and political makeup of American evangelicalism. Immigration and American religion often is told as the story of pluralism, the burgeoning of religious traditions from around the world. Even more important, perhaps, is the diversification of American Christianity:


Yet the most important religious dynamic of recent immigration, sociologist Steve Warner argues, is that it has brought even more diversity to American Christianity. Two-thirds of the new immigrants are Christians. The most prominent factor in this realm is Latin American immigration and the burgeoning Latino population in the United States. The conventional wisdom is that Latin America is pervasively Roman Catholic, and so are Latinos in the United States. Indeed, some 68 percent of Latinos in the U.S. are Roman Catholic and Latinos now are 30 percent of all U.S. Catholics. More than half of Latino Catholics in the U.S., however, identify with the charismatic movement. Another major piece of news is the rise of evangelical Protestantism in Latin America and among U.S. Latinos. In both Latin America as a whole and among U.S. Latinos, about 15 percent are now evangelical Protestants.

Carpenter considers, for example, where Latino evangelicals will head, politically; current signs are mixed.

Carpenter's essay is the one of an ongoing series currently being posted at Immanent Frame, featuring essays from some of the best-known scholars in the country. Here's a description of the series, and I'll continue to post links here as they are published:

In response to the media's increasing focus on the role of “evangelicals” in this fall's presidential election, we have organized an ongoing series of pieces that will examine what politicians, journalists, scholars and even evangelicals themselves mean when they refer to this highly contested category. Our series on "Evangelicals & evangelicalisms" looks critically not only at assumptions about evangelicals both in the US and beyond, but also at the ways that the "evangelical" category has been used to position people institutionally and historically. While scholars of religion have long recognized the category's complexities, it rarely receives sustained critical attention in either academic or public circles. Dedicated not only to high intellectual quality, dynamic discussion, and critical debate, but also to reaching both academic and non-specialist audiences, The Immanent Frame provides an ideal context in which to air out some of these issues.