Beck's Long Goodbye

Kelly Baker



On this past Thursday night, Glenn Beck said goodbye to Fox News and television sets, and hello to GBTV, his internet news channel. Here's a recap of the last show involving Jon Stewart, Hitler, and God. Over at Religion Dispatches, I editorialize about his departure, his legacy of history-making, and his brand of nationalism. Here's a glimpse:

Much of the coverage concludes that Beck is, at best, “bonkers.” Alex Pareene of Salon.com, however, realizes that perhaps this is not “some sort of victory”; that leaving Fox is not the end of Beck, but rather that his legacy might not be as a talking head but as an amateur historian, the creator of Beck University, with a clear, and popular, articulation of nation. The tagline for BU promises, “learn history as it really happened” with David Barton responsible for courses labeled Faith 101, 102, and 103, in which students can (of course) learn about the faith of the Founding Fathers.

Beck’s mantle of telling history like it really “was” is packaged, glossy, and consumed. Yet this mantle, or even legacy, does not solely belong to him. The struggle to reclaim the nation, or “restore honor,” began long before he, the John Birch Society, Joseph McCarthy and the like joined it in the mid-twentieth century. Americans, from the Reconstruction Klan in the 1860s, the Know Nothings of the 1890s to the second Klan of the 1910s and 1920s, to home-grown Christian fascists of the 1930s, sought to protect a nation in peril from any perceived threat, be it Catholic, Jew, African American, or Communist.

Food and no Food

Randall Stephens

Eating . . . and not eating. Since the post from the other day was about religion and weight gain, here's another about relieving world hunger and fasting for a cause.

NPR ran an intriguing story the other day about Former Congressman and director of Alliance to End Hunger Tony Hall, who "has joined dozens of religious leaders and thousands of supporters to protest budget cuts that they say will unfairly affect the poor." It reminded me of George McGovern's talk I heard at the University of Florida nearly a decade ago. The lecture was sponsored by the History Department. McGovern pondered his religious upbringing, discussed what the US could do to alleviate hunger around the globe, and spoke briefly about how the 9/11 attacks were changing America and its relationships with other nations. (I'm also thinking of activist and ag specialist Glen Fell who spoke at ENC the other day on his work training subsistence farmers around the globe in an effort to reduce hunger.)

Back to the NPR piece:

Pam Fessler, "Ex-Congressman Fasts To Protest Budget Cuts," NPR, April 17, 2011

PAM FESSLER: Meet Tony Hall. A few weeks ago, the 69-year-old might have been called a little pudgy. Today, he hikes up his pants before he sits.

Mr. HALL: I am the executive director of the Alliance to End Hunger.

FESSLER: He's also a former Democratic congressman from Ohio who made headlines in the 1990s by going on a 22-day hunger strike. He was protesting what he saw as congress's failure to address the problems of the poor. And today?

Mr. HALL: Well, I'm in my 18th day of a hunger fast. I started off as a water-only fast and now I'm doing liquids. And really what we're trying to do is raise awareness.

FESSLER: So far, he's lost about 18 pounds. But Hall says it's not so bad, especially when thousands of people around the world die each day of malnutrition and millions of Americans worry about their next meal. He worries what will happen if lawmakers accept proposed cuts in food stamps and foreign aid.

Mr. HALL: They have a moral obligation when they look at this budget not only to cut the budget but to cut it in a righteous way. . . .

Pole Dancing for Jesus?

Art Remillard

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

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

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

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

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

Contributors in the News

Paul Harvey

A brief note on some of the doings of our contributors here at RiAH.

First, John Fea is busy on a speaking schedule in support of his new book Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?On part of that tour he appeared at the Virginia Festival for the Book, and his panel there is now up on the C-SPAN website (it was shown on C-SPAN 2, that harvest of riches for book geeks everywhere).

Contributor Jon Pahl has been traveling the world, engaging in interfaith dialogues, currently in Jakarta. You can follow his travels at his blog, linked above.

Chris Jones is celebrating surviving his comprehensive exams, not to mention making plans to be a father! Congratulations to Chris. Also on the graduate school front, contributor Heath Carter, whose excellent article about "scabbing ministers and striking saints" in the 1894 railroad strike recently appeared in American Nineteenth Century History, has been awarded the Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation fellowship to support his work next year.

Kelly Baker is tinkering with the title of her soon-to-forthcome book, now entitled Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK's Appeal to Protestant America, out soon with University of Kansas Press. Gerardo Marti's book on worship in multiracial churches (Worship Across the Racial Divide: Notions of Race and the Practice of Religious Music in Multiracial Churches) is slated to come out with Oxford, next spring I believe, and Art Remillard's book about competing visions of civil religion in the post-Civil War South (especially the "Wiregrass" South) will be out with University of Georgia Press around the same time. Meanwhile, Seth Dowland will be decamping from Duke cross country to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA, where he will be a new assistant professor in the Religious Studies Department (correct me if I got the departmental affiliation wrong, Seth). Seth's book Family Values will be out with U. Penn Press next year we hope, and I hope many of you saw the preview for the book in his Church History article. And Lin Fisher, who's enjoying his year as an NEH Fellow at the Mass. Historical Society, is right at the end stages of finishing his terrific book The Indian Great Awakening, which Oxford will publish a bit down the road.

My co-blogmeister Randall Stephens is gearing up for his Fulbright in Norway next spring, where he will be a "Roving Scholar," while Ed Blum will be spending the year in Germany on a Fulbright as well. Meanwhile, Matt Sutton will use his recently awarded full-year NEH fellowship to work on his much-anticipated text about fundamentalism and politics since the 1930s. It's been a good year for Young Scholars.

As for me, I will be spending next year teaching a wonderfully light 3-4 load, directing 40 some odd senior theses, and writing to the NFL commissioner complaining about how the lockout has cancelled the fantasy football season, which is the only thing that gets me through the fall. As Historiann would say: Awesome!!!.

Oh, and after Glenn Beck's television contract with Fox runs out, he will be joining me as fellow blog-meister here at RiAH. So, please join me in welcoming Glenn to his new, highly-paid gig here at RiAH!! As you can see from the above, he will be joining an illustrious group of contributors.

The rest of ya'll, send your news.

Mapping Religious Life in the Five Boroughs

Paul Harvey

Earlier we blogged about a fascinating web venture, A Journey Through NYC Religions, run by a former Texan turned New Yorker who is endeavoring to map every house of worship, of every religious tradition, in the NYC metropolitan area.

In "Mapping Religious Life in the Five Boroughs," Mark Oppenheimer writes about this project, and spends some time with its creator, Tony Carnes, as he spots small mosques above Pakistani restaurants in Queens and the like. And read it now before the Times pay wall goes up. A little taste:

Along the way, Mr. Carnes, with three part-time assistants and other freelance helpers, is posting his findings online tonycreligion.info, his “public square,” he called it, where people can read about “the sizzle of religion in New York — the kosher sizzle! The halal sizzle!”

Mr. Carnes is in search of every church, cathedral, synagogue, shtiebel, mosque, temple, zendo and ashram. His crew gathers information by asking for it, in person. By the end of 2011, they will have driven every street in New York.

Oprah: Gospel of an Icon

Paul Harvey

Another day, another author interview -- I was hoping to do this myself somewhere down the road, but no longer necessary as Immanent Frame's "Spirituality, Political Engagement, and Public Life" has done it for me.

Kathryn Lofton's new book Oprah: Gospel of an Icon, is just out -- and just out in time for Oprah's new network, in what must surely be a divine coincidence. Check out the interview about the book here, where the author speaks with her usual panache. A little excerpt:

NS: What is it about how American religious history is studied now that has left Oprah not well-enough understood?

KL: I would say that the “how” of what we study is less problematic than the way we cordon our topics, which is very much an inheritance of our role as seminary church historians. I want to see more books written about objects that seem unlikely for religious studies, such as those seemingly in the purview of pop culture, but also those from economic and political arenas. Moreover, I think our disposition toward our subjects is often too tender for our own good. If on the one side we’ve been formed by our seminarian genealogies, on the other we inherit an abused mentality, one that flinches constantly at the possibility that elsewhere in the humanist ranks we’re being mocked for proximity to the religious subject. And so we appear, I think, often too defensive of our topics, believing they need caretaking before exposure to the imagined Marxist menace. So, if there is a critical edge to the book, it is to goad us to be less worried about explaining our subjects to their cultured despisers, and instead pursuing the mediations of their belief systems, the multiple functions of their ritual reiterations, and the social systems to which they reply and in which they participate

Read more about the book here, and more on the author here.

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.”

Selling God on the Net: Beliefnet's Affinity Group

Paul Harvey

Ever wondered about the philosophy and business model of the spirituality catch-all website Belief.net. And who exactly owned it anyway?

Yeah, neither did I. Whatever, dude.

But actually, the story is quite fascinating, as it turns out, and Mark Oppenheimer explains it in today's NY Times religion column. You won't be surprised to hear that Rupert Murdoch makes an appearance, if only (this time) to sell; apparently keeping Fox News fair and balanced (paleo-, neo-, and tea-party-o conservatism are all represented in all their glorious diversity!) and covering the deficits wracked up by the expensive purchase of the Wall Street Journal (which I actually do read and enjoy, thanks to their selling subscriptions for a relative pittance of frequent flyer miles), is taking his time. Anyway, a brief taste of this very interesting article:

Rupert Murdoch sells topless Page 3 girls to England, and he sells “fair and balanced” television commentary to America. But until last week, his most eccentric product was Beliefnet.com.

On June 25, Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation sold the pioneering religion Web site to the owners of Affinity4, a company run by evangelical Christians and, according to its Web site, is dedicated to “the sanctity of the family.” It is another owner and another incarnation for Beliefnet, an online magazine that has survived since 1999 by nurturing every aspect of our conflicted spirituality. It has united angels and yoga, monotheism and meditation. Beliefnet has become America.

Today, the story continues, 15 million subscribers receive one or more of Beliefnet's 23 newletters. I probably ought to subscribe to this one: "Weight Loss With Norris" (would that be Chuck, or J. Frank? Hell, what's the difference?). Hey, whatever works.

Beliefnet's current director plans to continue "leading folks in every one of the multifaith categories." Sounds like it's time for me to re-read my good ol' classic text R. Laurence Moore, Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of Culture. If that's not a good way to spend a 4th of July, what is?

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

The Black Church(?)

by Matt Sutton

There has been a lot of debate recently among academics about the “black church.” First Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., buried it on the Huffington Post. Then, Religion Dispatches asked some prominent scholars to respond to Glaude. Some dumped more dirt on the grave, others claimed that the church had never died, and others still asserted that it had never existed in the first place. In the midst of the forum Ed Blum inadvertently provoked a firestorm. Now he turns his attention away from the bizarre-o world of the academy to take on a bigger churcher—Barack Obama. See his excellent piece in the Washington Post here. Nice work Ed!

The People Vs. Leo Frank

Kelly Baker

The lynching of Leo Frank remains a subject of historical and popular interest. Frank, a Northern Jew, was accused of the rape and murder of Mary Phagan. For crime show buffs, the case contains mishandled evidence, questionable testimony, and good old fashioned prejudice. Modern audiences might have a hard time believing the mismanagement of the case, but the historical record clearly shows the political as well as social pressures that the judge, jury and prosecutor faced to find Phagan's murderer.

The trial and the resulting lynching have been dramatized in film and literature since the 1920s, and the most recent dramatization, The People Vs. Leo Frank, airs on PBS tonight at 10 pm EST.

The new film combines reenactment and interviews to shed light on this case. CNN describes the film:

It's a classic whodunit, starting with the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl and ending in a lynching. It was grist for a prosecutor's political aspirations, a case that was appealed all the way to the country's highest court and a story hotly debated in the national press.

At the center of it all was Leo Frank, a northern Jew who'd moved to Atlanta to supervise the National Pencil Company factory. When the body of Mary Phagan, a white child laborer, was found in the basement, law enforcement homed in on Frank. He was tried and convicted, based on what most historians say was the perjured testimony of a black man, and sentenced to death. But when the governor commuted his sentence in 1915, about 25 men abducted Frank, 31, from the state prison and hung him from a tree in Marietta, Georgia.

Considered one of the most sensational trials of the early 20th century, the Frank case seemed to press every hot-button issue of the time: North vs. South, black vs. white, Jew vs. Christian, industrial vs. agrarian. In the years since, it has inspired numerous books and films, TV programs, plays, musicals and songs. It has fueled legal discussions, spawned a traveling exhibition and driven public forums.

The answers to these questions, or theories, keep coming.Who murdered Mary Phagan? What forces were behind the lynching of Frank? Why should we still care?

"Leo Frank was not a good ole Southern boy. He was different and not ashamed of being different," said Ben Loeterman, whose new documentary, "The People v. Leo Frank," will air Monday on PBS. "The test of us as a society is not necessarily how we treat the best among us but how we treat the most questionable."

Later this week, I'll post my thoughts about this particular film and the current scholarship on Leo Frank. I encourage other contributors (especially Art Remillard) to join in the discussion on why this cold case has such popularity still and what Frank's lynching says about the religion and intolerance in 1920s America.

Niebuhr v. Niebuhr

Paul Harvey

John Fea has beaten me to the punch in pointing to Obama's Theologian, a recent Speaking of Faith radio interview about Reinhold Niebuhr with E. J. Dionne and David Brooks. It's an interesting conversation, and far be it from me to deny the recent Niebuhr revival its just due. If economists are all Keynesians now, religion and social policy thinkers seem to be all Niebuhrians, from Obama on down. Aside from Lincoln, and maybe M. L. King, it's hard to think of anyone Obama channels in his addresses more than Niebuhr.

With all that in mind, perhaps it's a good time to take a cold bath and feel a little uncomfortable chill from all this necessary but sometimes impoverishing realism. I felt a little bit of that chill yesterday evening as I was just cracking open Kip Kosek's Acts of Conscience, which I just mentioned here at the blog a couple of days ago. I'm no further than the introduction, but the author grabbed my attention immediately with this passage:

". . . the tough liberals of the mid-twentieth century [ignored] the Christian nonviolent tradition's most profound insight. The problem of the twentieth century, the pacifists contended, was the problem of violence. . . . It was, above all, the fact of human beings killing one another with extraordinary ferocity and effectiveness. . . Pacifists certainly failed to solve the problem of 'permanent war,' but the uncomfortable truth is that everyone else failed, too, even the liberal realists. Recent estimates put the total number of people killed by oranized violence in the twentieth century between 167 million and 188 million, which works out to some five thousand lives unnaturally ended every single day for a hundred years. Of course, the deaths came not at regular intervals, but rather in concentrated spasms unprecedented in their destructive power. . . We should take radical Christian pactifists seriously not because they were always right, but because they force us, as they forced their contemporaries, to confront these terrible truths. They insisted more emphatically, more sanely, than Niebuhr and the realists that the elimination of violence was not mere tilting at windmills but the most urgent modern project. "

Kosek focuses his book on the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a group with which Niebuhr was intimately involved during his time at Union Seminary. In researching Freedom's Coming, I encountered Niebuhr as an inspirational professor who sent a remarkable number of idealists on projects (I was focusing on civil rights) that must have seemed quixotic at the time. Discovering the inspiration for the likes of Howard Kester, James Dombrowski, Myles Horton, and others was exhilarating, and Niebuhr was central to the expansive dreams of this lot. The liberal realists of that era had no answer to American apartheid; the dreamers did.

Later, Niebuhr moved out of the religious left of the day and into a vision of liberal realism;that's the Niebuhr primarily that is celebrated today. Kosek has a less celebratory take: "the decline of the Fellowship's strain of radical Christianity has not led to enlightened secularism, but rather to an impoverishment of political discourse about violence."

More to come on this, but listening to the Niebuhr program in conjunction with just a short survey of Acts of Conscience has been a rich treat already.

Luxury Condominium Catholicism

MICHAEL PASQUIER

Every Saturday I drive my daughter to swimming lessons in a town on the outskirts of Boston. And every Saturday I pass what was once St. Theresa Catholic Church and what is now Bell Tower Place Condominiums. St. Theresa’s was one of 65 Boston-area churches shuttered by Archbishop Sean P. O’Malley in 2004. The decision to close so many churches came in the aftermath of an $85 million legal settlement with 552 victims of sexual abuse in 2002. Crucial to the plaintiffs’ case was Cardinal Bernard F. Law’s admission that he covered up allegations of sexual abuse by reassigning accused priests to other parishes around the archdiocese. Law knew about John J. Geoghan’s attacks on young people as early as 1984, just a year before a small-town investigative journalist uncovered what he called “the veil of secrecy that surrounds the case of Gilbert Gauthe,” a priest who later admitted to similar actions in the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana. News of Gauthe’s guilt reached the pages of the New York Times and Time. It also received coverage in a 1985 issue of the National Catholic Reporter, which included the editorial comment that “the tragedy and scandal is not only with the actions of the individual priests—these are serious enough—but with church structures in which bishops, chanceries and seminaries fail to respond to complaints, or even engage in coverup.”

Since the mid-1980s theologians, historians, lawyers, journalists, teachers, parents—just about everyone—have thought about the behavior of priests and the institution of the priesthood. Scott Appleby, a historian of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, told American bishops in 2002 that they were accomplices in “a betrayal of fidelity enabled by the arrogance that comes with unchecked power.” Eugene Kennedy, a professor of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago, accused American bishops of suffering from “Pontius Pilate Syndrome, that unwillingness to learn, that fatal paralysis of judgment, that preferential option for passivity.” Indeed, “the real subject,” according to Kennedy, “is not the sex abuse scandal but the bishops themselves.” Historian Jay P. Dolan made a similar assertion in a postscript to the second edition of his book In Search of an American Catholicism, writing that “a celibate, male, clerical culture impervious to outside scrutiny has created the worst scandal in the history of American Catholicism.”

The statements of Appleby, Kennedy, and Dolan have not gone without criticism. I distinctly remember watching and listening to EWTN commentators reduce Appleby’s 2002 remarks at the Dallas conference of bishops to some kind of feminist rant laced with a liberal homosexual agenda. Read for yourself. That being said, the debate over the present crisis in the Catholic Church does seem to have escaped the scrutiny of most historians with the analytical tools necessary to unveil the many faces of the priesthood. To put it another way, historians have the ability to take what they’ve learned by studying “the people” and retrain their eyes on the priests. Case in point: Francois Raymond, diocesan priest of Opelousas, Louisiana, accused of raping a girl in 1862. Archival sources reveal a scared assortment of priests in the Archdiocese of New Orleans scurrying to cover up reports of Raymond and a pregnant girl, his regular meetings “in the woods with other women of bad reputation,” and his affair with an enslaved woman of African descent. Such "great scandals," according to a priest close to Raymond, produced a negative effect on the reputation of priests and threats of physical violence. The threats were so great, in fact, that one priest suggested that “for his health, to renew his morale, [and] to let dissipate all the commotion in its entirety,” Raymond should “take a retreat, that he go on a little trip,” and then return to another area of Louisiana when things had settled down.

But if history isn’t your thing, then look more closely at today’s changing Catholic landscape and tone of Catholic voices in urban, suburban, and rural America. Learn about how Catholic laypeople have held vigils in 5 “suppressed” (that’s canon law speak for “closed”) churches in the Archdiocese of Boston since their official closures in 2004. Think about the impact of widespread church closures throughout the United States just as the overall Catholic population rises, largely as a consequence of the growing number of Hispanic parishioners. And take seriously the words of laypeople who react to bishops acting like bishops. In response to the resignation of Cardinal Law, one woman had this to say: “This should teach a lesson to the people in charge, to someone like him. I think the church was really protecting themselves and they didn’t really care about the children. A lot of children got hurt because of that.” And in response to a visit by Archbishop O’Malley to a suppressed church in Boston, another woman had this to say: “That was utter hypocrisy to have him here to speak about the importance of having a community of worship in the very building he’s shutting down.”

Perhaps Luxury Condominium Catholicism isn’t the right way to describe the current state of American Catholicism after all. Maybe it’s a euphemism for Angry Catholicism. Either way, or in completely different ways, the deep historical and cultural roots of the Catholic priesthood are losing their mysterious qualities. Mystery is bound to fade as long as people like Father Donald McGuire of the Archdiocese of Chicago go to prison for the abuse of minors. McGuire, supposedly a respected confidante of Mother Teresa, admitted during sentencing earlier this week that “Tears are frequent for me these days.” A father of two boys had this to say: “Give me 30 minutes in a locked room with him and a baseball bat—with no repercussions in this or the next life—and I’m ready to call it a day.”

Alan Wolfe on What Rick Warren's Acceptance of Obama's Invitation Really Means

Crossposted, with a few minor edits, from The Way of Improvement Leads Home

By John Fea

Alan Wolfe is optimistic about a future progressive turn among American evangelicals.

Writing in today's New Republic, Wolfe sees Rick Warren's acceptance of Obama's invitation to pray at the inauguration as a sign that evangelicals are moving out of their own secluded subculture and into the mainstream of American (political?) culture. Despite what many liberals and members of the LGBT community seem to think, Wolfe argues that Warren's willingness to accept Obama's invitation is more important than Obama offering it. Warren's acceptance of Obama's invitation, according to Wolfe, will (and has already) resulted in backlash from the more conservative wing of American evangelicalism. Wolfe's hope is that "Obama's election will lead the more extreme right-wing Christians to purge their ranks of people such as (Richard) Cizek (sic)--and Warren. Maybe we should encourage them to do so, for this will weaken them politically by drawing them even further from the center."

I am struck by four things about Wolfe's short piece.

First, Wolfe understands, unlike much of the recent press coverage, that Warren, despite his opposition to gay marriage and support of California's Proposition 8, is indeed a different kind of evangelical than those who associate with the Religious Right. Warren represents evangelicals concerned with cultural and political engagement in a way strikingly different from folks like Dobson, Falwell, and Robertson. He represents evangelicals concerned with the poor, global suffering, health care, and climate control. Warren does see eye-to-eye with the Religious Right on gay marriage, as most evangelicals do, but he stands more for the future of the movement than its past. This may seem like splitting hairs, but the difference is important. It goes a long way toward explaining why Warren accepted Obama's invitation.

Second, I think Wolfe, who seems somewhat giddy about the way that Warren's acceptance of Obama's offer to pray has divided evangelicals, is overly optimistic about evangelicals changing their minds about gay marriage and other social issues. Wolfe has studied evangelicals, but I am not sure he really knows them. The Christian college where I teach (a place where Wolfe will be visiting in the spring) has recently been addressing the question of Christian homosexuals. In fact, there have been some members of the student body who have been open about their homosexuality and have been interviewed for a feature story in the college newspaper. But despite these isolated cases, most college students I encounter at my particular Christian college (a Christian college often accused by conservative evangelicals of being too "liberal") still uphold traditional views of marriage and would be opposed to thinking about this social institution any other way.

Third, I DO think that Wolfe's accomodation thesis has some merits. Evangelicals, remember, are Protestants. And ever since the Reformation Protestants have felt free to change their interpretation of the Bible on a whim. Evangelicals have made this an art form. Wolfe, in other words, has evangelical history on his side. The story of American evangelicalism has always, as historians such as Nathan Hatch and Mark Noll have suggested, been one of cultural accomodation. (I make a similar argument, drawing from Noll and others, in The Way of Improvement Leads Home). I just think, as I argued in the previous paragraph, accomodation on gay marriage is going to take a lot longer than Wolfe projects.

Fourth, Wolfe writes as if Rick Warren, as an evangelical pastor, is breaking new ground by accepting Obama's invitation to pray. "Warren's decision to accept an invitation from a liberal president," Wolfe notes, "is as clear a symbol of the entry of evangelicals into mainstream culture as one can imagine." If this is the case, then what does Wolfe make of Billy Graham's decision to pray at both of Bill Clinton's inauguration ceremonies? (Graham was also a part of Lyndon Johnson's inaugural festivities). Clinton may not have been as "liberal" as Obama, but he was certainly pro-choice, pro-gay, and, if I remember correctly, drew intense heat for it from the evangelical community.

Is the Mortgage Crisis a Spiritual One?

Kelly Baker

Time has an interesting article today on how the Prosperity Gospel has led some followers into the subprime mortgage mess. Jonathon Walter (University of California at Riverside) and Anthea Butler weigh in on how this theological focus on prosperity led many to believe that religious reasons were paramount in the approval of their risky mortgages. God, it seems, wanted them to have these homes despite their individual economic situations. The reaction from churches that promote the Prosperity Gospel will prove interesting as the financial tumult continues. Here's an excerpt:

Has the so-called Prosperity Gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants — and hence, victims — of the current financial crisis? That's what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California Riverside, he realized that Prosperity's central promise — that God would "make a way" for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, toxic expression during sub-prime boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe "God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house." The results, he says, "were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers."

Others think he may be right. Says Anthea Butler, an expert in pentecostalism at the University of Rochester in New York state, "The pastor's not gonna say 'go down to Wachovia and get a loan' but I have heard, 'even if you have a poor credit rating God can still bless you — if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation to the church], you'll get that house, or that car or that apartment.'" Adds J. Lee Grady, editor of the magazine Charisma, "It definitely goes on, that a preacher might say, 'if you give this offering, God will give you a house. And if they did get the house, people did think that it was an answer to prayer, when in fact it was really bad banking policy." If so, the situation offers a look at how an native-born faith built partially on American econoic optimism entered into a toxic symbiosis with a pathological market. ...

But Walton suggests that a decade's worth of ever-easier credit acted like drug in Prosperity's bloodstream. "The economic boom 90's and financial over-extensions of the new millennium contributed to the success of the prosperity message," he wrote recently. And not positively. "Narratives of how 'God blessed me with my first house despite my credit' were common. Sermons declaring 'it's your season to overflow' supplanted messages of economic sobriety," and "little attention was paid to.. the dangers of using one's home equity as an ATM to subsidize cars, clothes and vacations."

With the bubble burst, Walton and Butler assume that prosperity congregants have taken a disproportionate hit, and are curious as to how their churches will respond. Butler thinks that some of the flashier ministries will shrink along with their congregants' fortunes. Says Walton, "You would think that the current economic conditions would undercut their theology." But he predicts they will persevere [sic], since God's earthly largess [sic] is just as attractive when one is behind the economic eight ball.

Democrats and Abortion

Kelly Baker

With the Democratic convention in full swing, it is not surprising that journalists are weighing in on a variety of issues, especially abortion. Two pieces appeared today that explore the position of the party and the presumptive nominee, Barack Obama, on the issue. In Newsweek, George Wiegel argues that the Democrats are dodging this important issue:

Then there are the multiple confusions of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In her "Meet the Press" appearance Aug. 24, Pelosi was asked by Tom Brokaw whether she agreed with Senator Obama's statements on abortion at Saddleback. Pelosi, declaring herself an "ardent, practicing Catholic," told Brokaw that "this is an issue that I have studied for a long time"—and then got herself into a deep muddle, in which she seemed to confuse St. Augustine with St. Thomas Aquinas (neither of whom, in any case, knew anything about modern embryology); misrepresented the settled (and scientifically informed) judgment of the Catholic Church on when life begins by declaring it an open question, and concluded by suggesting that none of this really makes a difference, because what the scientists, theologians, and philosophers say "... shouldn't have an impact on a the woman's right to choose." The Speaker then misrepresented the legal impact of Roe v. Wade, arguing that the Supreme Court hadn't created a right to "abortion on demand"—which will come as news to those on both sides of the ongoing debates over partial-birth abortion and other late-term abortion procedures, parental- and spousal-notifications laws and regulatory oversight of abortion clinics.

Democrats who had hoped to persuade a good number of evangelicals and Catholics to return to their traditional 20th-century political home in November 2008 cannot be very encouraged by such intellectual disarray on the part of their party's senior federal official. For more than three decades, the abortion license created by the high court in Roe v. Wade has been an important factor in determining American voting behavior—in more than a few instances, the decisive factor. Yet, judging by her performance on "Meet The Press" (which seemed to surprise the usually unflappable Tom Brokaw), the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives is as ill-informed on the scientific and legal facts involved in the abortion debate as she is of the teaching of the Catholic Church. Speaker Pelosi is, like most "ardent, practicing" Catholics, a great admirer of the late Pope John Paul II. Was John Paul wrong, one wants to ask Speaker Pelosi, when he wrote in the 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae [The Gospel of Life] that "abortion ... always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being"? Was he wrong when he further stated that this moral truth could be known by reason, and was thus a matter of grave concern to public policy?

While Wiegel points to the "intellectual disarray" of the party, Michael Sean Winters of Slate offers another interpretation: The Democrats are attempting to allow a plurality of opinions on abortion, while not compromising their pro-choice lineage. This strategy would allow for voters who want abortions "legal, safe, and rare" to find a home in the party, especially Catholic voters who are vehemently pro-life. Winters notes that Sen. Bob Casey Jr.'s address to the convention (when his father was denied this privilege in 1992 for being pro-life) and the selection of the Catholic Joe Bidden as Obama's running mate signals that Democrats are open to a new plank about abortion. The party, according to Winters, is seeking to show that it is no longer militantly pro-choice to attract those in the middle of the pro-life and pro-choice positions. He writes:

The trend among Catholic Democrats is not toward a doctrinaire pro-life or pro-choice position but instead toward what could be called "pro-choices," plural. They defend the legality of Roe, but they want to make sure that programs are in place to help women make the choice to carry the child to term, such as adequate and affordable pre- and postnatal care and a less-cumbersome adoption system. They also favor programs to reduce the need for abortions in the first place through better age-appropriate sex education and family-planning services. These proposals were part of a legislative effort to reduce the number of abortions led by Democrats in Congress, including pro-life Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio and pro-choice Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.

Barack Obama has warmed to this approach, altering the abortion plank in the Democratic Party platform. After affirming the party's unequivocal commitment to Roe, the platform asserts: "We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions. The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman's decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre and post natal health care, parenting skills, income support, and caring adoption programs." This language does not please some hard-core pro-choice activists because it implies a stigmatization of abortion, but it is difficult to portray oneself as championing women's reproductive freedom if you oppose such measures.

So, what do our blog readers think? Is the Democratic party in "disarray" about the issue of abortion or is this supposed confusion a strategy to highlight the importance of "pro-choices" to bring along evangelical and Catholic voters? How do y'all think the abortion issue is going to play out in the election this year? Will it be simply categorized as a "values" issue? Or will the nominees have to address this issue to win over voters? (I would love to hear analysis from our religion and politics junkies as well as from Mike on the characterization of Catholic voters.)

"Secrets of a Master Scholar"

Kelly Baker

Our illustrious leader, Paul Harvey, was recently interviewed by the Colorado Springs Record because of his excellent scholarship as well as his Teacher of the Year award, 2007-2008, at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Congratulations, Paul!

Here are some excerpts from the interview:

CSR+: Congratulations on being awarded Teacher of the Year at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs 2007-08. It is a great honor that recognizes you an academic leader at UCCS and in the community. What has contributed to the quality of your teaching excellence?

I have compared teaching history classes to my favorite musical form: jazz. Teaching is taking a theme, making sure that theme is explored, but allowing plenty of room for improvisation, and most especially for those moments when a student conversation or insight “takes flight”, and something totally unexpected emerges. Being rigorously trained in the discipline, being clear and firm on the standards expected in the classroom, but also being open “to the moment”—all of these combined are required, I believe, for the best teaching. It requires a careful blend of discipline, structure, and spontaneity which never stays the same from one class to another. One also has to have a lot of patience and forgiveness, both for students, but also for one’s own self; every day is not going to be a shining moment of teaching brilliance, and sometimes your most valued and ostensibly impressive teaching experiments will just flat-out fail. That’s fine, as long as one always learns from the experience.

...

CSR+: Your particular interest lies in the impact of religion on American culture and society. How would you characterize the profound impact religion has had or has on American culture? Is it different from the impact of religion other societies around the world?

The impact of religion in America presents a fundamental paradox. On the one hand, the United States was founded with the principle of the separation of church and state, without any established church or religious tests for office. Some of the founding fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson, believed that this would lead to a society based on rationalism rather than (as Jefferson saw them) biblical myths and religious superstitions. But then, as it turned out, history worked out very differently, and the United States became a place where religion exerted more influence than perhaps any other society in the western world. That influence was deeply pervasive and cultural, rather than strictly political, and this dates, I believe, from the antebellum era of American history (about the 1820s forward), with what is called the “Second Great Awakening.” That is when evangelicalism became a dominant form of religious expression. It’s hard to compare America’s experience with religion’s influence to anywhere else, for in this regard the United States is sui generis, unlike anywhere else.

...

CSR+: What role does religion play in current American society? Is it healthy or unhealthy? How do you see the role of religion on American society evolving as our country’s population becomes more diversified?

That’s a hard question to answer, because in the field of religious studies, no one really agrees on what the term “religion” means, and certainly the impact of religion in public life, and whether that is “healthy” or “unhealthy,” is deeply disputed – just think of the arguments about groups such as Focus on the Family, for example. Religion is deeply ingrained, for better or worse, in our national identity, in our political dialogues, and even in the most basic metaphors that we use to understand America as a country. That’s why a 17th-century Puritan phrase, “city upon a hill,” has had such a long life in American politics. That kind of American idealism, derived ultimately from religious ideas, has inspired much of what is best in our country’s history (including the ideals of religious freedom, however imperfectly practiced, that I mentioned above), as well as much of what is worst in our history (including the legacies of slavery, racism, intolerance, and religiously motivated violence). Nowadays, as Americans learn pretty much for the first time in our history what “pluralism” truly means – i.e., not just different varieties of Christians, or even different varieties of Jews and Christians, but multitudes of different faiths living together in close proximity – our religious heritage of de facto Protestantism continues to lag behind the reality of religious pluralism. That explains the tortured debate about whether America is a “Christian nation.” Yet the U.S. has the promise to show what a truly religious pluralistic society looks like. We’re a long ways from that, but we’re a far sight better than we used to be.

God's Hunky Bodies

Kelly Baker

In my Religions in the U.S. class, I use images of Jesus to demonstrate different theological movements: the feminized Jesus, Warner Salman's Jesus, an African American Jesus, etc. I also use an image of Jesus from the Book of Mormon in which Jesus is preaching to Native American peoples. What I point out to students is that this rendition of Jesus is always so muscular. He's got huge biceps, a chiseled chin, and flowing hair. I pass around my copy of the Book of Mormon, so that they can see that the other figures depicted in the sacred text are also sufficiently muscled. Moroni buries the golden plates as his forearms and biceps ripple and bulge. The images make it clear that these religious men are manly men with the strength to prove it. Masculinity exudes from them.

Recent agitation over a calendar of shirtless Mormon missionaries made me reflect on the above images and why glorifying male bodies proved inflammatory in this particular context. Steve Freiss, in an article entitled "Mormon Beefcake," explored the controversy over the calendar and the excommunication of the calendar's creator, Chad Hardy. For the author, the fusion of religion and sexuality that appeared in the calendar led to Hardy's punishment. "Men on a Mission," after all, juxtaposed pictures of smiling Mormon men in their missionary attire (white shirt, tie, black pants, and name tag) with images of the men shirtless in various poses with smoldering gazes. Freiss writes:

Hardy says the church has accused him of using religion to sell sex. But he prefers to think of it as the other way around: he's using eye-catching and unexpected images of usually buttoned-up men to draw attention to the charitable and civic contributions of the faith. Until his excommunication, Hardy was a sixth-generation Mormon who some six years ago stopped attending church, tithing or wearing the requisite sacred undergarments, but he insisted he still admires the church and wanted to use the calendar a form of outreach. "I have my own feelings about the church; they're personal," he said. "I don't want to make the church look bad. I want this to be a positive thing for these guys."

...

The calendar also features a biography of each model, mentioning the place where he served his mission and some thoughts on his faith. None are particularly provocative poses by beefcake calendar standards, although Mr. October 2008 does have a finger tugging down his belt and exposing the elastic of his underwear.

Interestingly, one of the participants for the 2009 calendar, Christopher Hayes, thought the calendar might demonstrate that Mormons were part of the mainstream. Freiss noted:

Hayes's mother, in fact, urged him on after the 2008 edition was cited as the "Hot Calendar" of the year by Rolling Stone magazine. Hayes's mother and grandparents even attended the photo shoot in Las Vegas in March. "What we're doing is showing people that Mormons aren't the weird, sheltered people that people think we are. It was more of an acceptance of us as people."

On Hardy's website, Mormons Exposed, one can buy the calendar, declare a secret crush on the models, buy a t-shirt with your favorite model, and learn about auditions for new models. Additionally, the FAQ section addresses questions about the purpose of the calendar and the larger project of Mormons Exposed. The website echoes Hayes's sentiments:

Behind the eye-candy, this calendar has a deeper story - one that can reshape perceptions, heighten awareness, and perhaps encourage and inspire a broadened acceptance of human and religious diversity. The fact that twelve young returned missionaries are posing shirtless will certainly raise eyebrows, but may also help to sort out some common misconceptions about Mormons. The shock value of what these traditionally conservative young men have helped to create has the power to build a dialogue that encourages people across every belief system and walk of life to defy stereotypes, step out of judgment and embrace tolerance.
...
The twelve former missionaries who "bare their testimony" on the pages of the Men on a Mission calendar were hand-selected for their striking good looks and powerful spiritual devotion. They are men who were comfortable enough in their own beliefs, and independent and brave enough to take a stand for what they believe in regardless of what others may think. By slightly stepping away from the Mormon traditions of modest dress, these missionaries show the world they can have a strong faith and be proud of who they are, both with a sense of individualism and a sense humor at the same time.

The message is by showing Mormon "eye-candy," the website hopes to counter stereotypes of Mormons in larger culture. Muscled bodies demonstrate that these young men are no different than other half-dressed religious people? Baring their chests lays bare their devotion to their faith as well as highlights their virility. Folks who scoff at Mormon missionaries on bikes have missed the sheer prowess of their masculinity, and the calendar serves as a corrective to show that Mormons, just like other religious Americans, are willing to showcase their bodies (for their faith in this instance). Undressing for tolerance is not an idea I have encountered before, but it could work if hard bodies distract folks from their religious prejudices. (If this catches on, please let me know.) However, I think the paean to tolerance and supposed humor of the calendar were lost on LDS officials.

Hardy claims that his excommunication was due to his personal behavior not the calendar, but not all agree with his claims. Richard Bushman, noted Mormon scholar, chalked the issue up to the combination of the erotic with imagery of the missionaries.This fusion suggested that missionaries are more than chaste evangelists for the faith but rather are sexual creatures as well. The glorification of male bodies and sexuality seems to be problematic because the calendar makes it obvious that missionaries are sexual beings despite the uniform. Moreover, the conception that gazing on these men builds religious commitment might prove to be a bit of a stretch. Lust might not be the approved way to become more faithful. (See Gary Laderman's Ecstatic Sex on the complicated relationship of religion and sexuality at Religion Dispatches.)

Yet muscled Mormon bodies have presence in Mormon visual imagery. However, muscled angels and religious figures are tucked safely away in sacred text. They also have their shirts on. (Editor's note: I stand corrected most have their shirts on. Please see the comments section.) Their muscles signal virility and strength of the tradition rather than sexual objectification. The calendar lacks the sacred legitimacy despite Hardy's commitment to using sexuality to sell religion. This falls outside the bounds of previous masculine representation. Muscled religious figures promoted the faith, but how do shirtless missionaries contribute?

Moreover, the issue of who consumes the calendar also adds to the controversy. Hardy noted that "Men on a Mission" was quite popular among gay men. The issue of eroticism proves tricky, but the possibility of homoeroticism is more difficult for the leadership of LDS because gay members must remain chaste. Hardy, however, is not discouraged by the commotion over "Men on a Mission" because his next calendar entitled "Hot Muffins" will contain images of Mormon mothers and their recipes. Risque pictures of Mormon moms might prove even more controversial than the barely clad missionaries.

Religion in the News Spring 2008

Kelly Baker

The spring edition of Religion in the News is now available, and the topics of the issue include: Obama's impact on civil religion, a critique of the "On Faith" blog, and the fascination with the pope's fashion (and his position on academic freedom) on his recent visit to name a few.