Thoughts on the Compassion Forum

I hope some of you got to see the Compassion Forum last night on CNN. If not, CNN has posted the transcript. First let me say that this was a huge and exciting event for our campus community. Messiah is a Christian college with a mission that resonates with many of the compassion issues--poverty, global aids, abortion, Darfur, torture, climate change, etc...--that were raised last night. Like I told a few reporters after the event, I can't think of a better place, nine days before the Pennsylvania primary, to discuss these kinds of things.

As a historian, I was struck by

1). How far the Democrats have come on faith issues. I can't imagine Al Gore in 2000 or John Kerry in 2004 speaking at an event like this.

2). How far evangelicals have come. As we all know by now, there is a new generation of evangelicals out there who are trying to apply their faith to a host of issues beyond abortion, homosexual marriage, and stem-cell research.

3). How far Messiah College has come. Messiah, as some of you know, has roots in the Anabaptist community. Historically, Anabaptists have shunned political and cultural engagement. Messiah's Brethren in Christ roots are still important to the college, but there seems to be a new emphasis on engagement in public life here that may not have been as strong in previous generations.

As far as the Forum itself, I was a bit disappointed--both with some of the questions asked and with some of the candidate's answers. It was basically the same format, the same questions (and many of the same questioners), and the same answers that we saw at the presidential forum on faith and values sponsored by Sojourners and televised by CNN last June. Like Soledad O'Brien last spring, Campbell Brown and John Meacham seemed obsessed with asking personal and/or theological questions. It was nice to know, for example, that Hillary likes Queen Esther and Obama does not believe in a literal six-day creation, but more time could have been devoted to the way the faith of these candidates informed their thinking about policy matters. (Meacham had a particular fascination with asking strange and quirky questions and then chuckling like a giddy little kid who just stumped his fourth grade teacher).

When faith and policy questions were addressed, Obama seemed to offer insights that were deeper and more theologically informed than Hillary. Clinton at times seemed to ramble on endlessly without making any real point. I would invite you to go back and read the transcript and try to make sense of Hillary's answer to Rev. Joel Hunter's question about faith and presidential leadership.

Many have asked me about why McCain was not present. First, let me say that Messiah and Faith in Public Life (the organization who sponsored the event) pursued McCain very, very aggressively. I am not sure why he declined to show up. He said that he had a scheduling conflict, but we know that he spent the day at home in Arizona. My hunch is that the McCain camp is not yet prepared to address these religious issues. Perhaps they have some more homework to do, especially since faith-talk does not seem to come easily for the Republican nominee. Or perhaps this event was perceived to be linked to the "religious left." This is unfortunate because the sponsors made it clear that this would be a bipartisan event. Questions were asked by an evangelical megachurch pastor, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Vice President of the National Association of Evangelicals. Politically, I think McCain missed a great opportunity to define himself as the pro-life alternative to the Democrats and win over conservative Christians who have questioned his evangelical credentials.

Finally, let me say a few words about the buzz I heard from students. Many Messiah College students love Obama. When Hillary came out before the televised event to greet people she got strong applause, but it quickly dissipated. When Obama appeared the roar was deafening (at least from where I was seated) and it continued whenever Obama answered a question. Frankly, it is hard not to get caught up in the traveling rock star spectacle that is the Obama campaign. The guy has charisma.

There were also many students who were disappointed with the candidates pro-choice answers to questions about abortion. This issue is still very important, even to younger evangelicals who are tired of the culture wars.

I could go on, but I will leave it there. What do you think? If readers have any other specific questions about the event feel free to shoot me an e-mail or comment on this blog.

Compassion Forum at Messiah College this Sunday Night

BY JOHN FEA

Ed Blum may be tired of all the politics, but political junkies like myself can't get enough. If you are not doing anything Sunday night tune into CNN at 8pm to watch Obama and Hillary speak about faith and policy during the "Compassion Forum." (John McCain was also invited, but he declined the offer). The event is sponsored by an organization called Faith in Public Life and it will be hosted by Messiah College. Campbell Brown (CNN) and Jon Meacham (Newsweek) will be moderating.

I will be serving the college tommorrow as a media contact person. (This means I get to sit for two hours in a big room and talk to the national press about politics, evangelicalism, Messiah College, and anything else they are curious about). I will probably have no chance whatsoever of meeting either candidate.

I will try to post some of my reflections on this event next week.

Addendum: Here is a promotional op-ed piece I wrote for the event. A lot of it will be familiar stuff to readers of this blog.

Compassion and the Evangelical Vote
By John Fea

After John Kerry lost miserably among Christian voters in 2004, Democrats found religion. When they stopped thinking about evangelicals as part of a “right wing conspiracy” Democrats learned just how much common ground they shared with them.

Consider the work of Rick Warren, the pastor of an evangelical mega-church and a best-selling Christian author. He uses his fame and wealth to fight global poverty, disease, and illiteracy around the world, especially in Africa.

Rich Cizik, vice president for government affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals, has tackled climate change. His activism drew heated rebukes from the leaders of the Christian Right, but Cizik has refused to back down from his conviction that Christians have a responsibility to care for God’s creation.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has praised the work of evangelical relief agencies in Darfur. He has also suggested that Christianity is behind democratic protests and human rights initiatives in China.

By championing these causes evangelicals are not abandoning their primary work of spreading the gospel around the world. Nor will they cease their opposition to abortion, a reform which many of them understand as a means of showing compassion to the unborn. But the days of choosing a candidate based solely on political party or on one or two moral issues seem to be fading, and it is also clear that the evangelical agenda is broadening.

Evangelicals cheered when George W. Bush ran for president in 2000 on the platform of “compassionate conservatism.” As the first openly born-again president since Jimmy Carter, Bush pledged to offer faith-based solutions to the social problems facing the United States and the world.

Things seemed to go well at first. Bush’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives provided grants to religious organizations working for social justice. He funded relief efforts for those around the globe suffering from AIDS and malaria. At home he defended his compassionate immigration policy against many in his party who opposed it.

Throughout his presidency Bush has managed to sustain some of these ambitious plans for faith-based reform, but as Lyndon Johnson learned during the Vietnam era, it is hard to provide butter when so much of the nation’s resources are invested in guns.

With Democrats speaking the language of faith and Republicans continuing to hold the support of many evangelicals, religion has played an unprecedented role in the 2008 presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton has identified publicly with her Methodist faith. Barack Obama speaks openly about his conversion experience at Jeremiah Wright’s church. John McCain recently announced that he worships with the Southern Baptists.

But evangelicals want to hear more. Is faith just one of many talking points on the campaign trail or will it directly affect the way these candidates think about policy matters? Obama has said that “secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square.” If this is true, then evangelicals need to know, in specific terms, what exactly faith in the public square might look like.

The candidates will soon get a chance to address these topics of evangelical interest. On April 13, nine days before the Pennsylvania primary, Obama, Clinton, and McCain will have an opportunity to participate in the “Compassion Forum,” a bipartisan and nationally televised event where the candidates will be asked to talk about the way faith informs their positions on issues such as poverty, abortion, global AIDS, genocide, and human rights. The forum will be held at Messiah College, a school with a historic commitment to social justice and Christian compassion.

Compassion is at the core of how evangelicals practice their belief in the world. While it is a practice that transcends political parties and ideologies, is also one that evangelicals want their politicians, especially those who claim to be people of faith concerned with the common good, to take seriously. It is time that our candidates for president engage with the American people in a deeper, richer, and sustained conversation on these matters.

"But the Holy Father Is Coming"

MICHAEL PASQUIER

Yesterday, a student asked me if she could be excused from class next week.  “But we’re going to review for the final exam,” I replied.  “But the Holy Father is coming,” she responded.  I have to admit I didn’t see that one coming.  However, I’m reminded by my devout student that the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States is a pretty big deal for many American Catholics.  It’s also an interesting moment for us religious studies types to observe the carefully choreographed collision of American culture and Roman Catholicism in the twenty-first century.  

Benedict XVI, formerly known as Joseph Cardinal Radzinger, will be visiting Washington, D.C., and New York City from April 15 through 19.  He is scheduled to meet President Bush and the First Lady, Catholic bishops, Catholic teachers, Catholics kids, non-Christian religious groups, Protestant groups, packed crowds at Nationals Park and Yankee Stadium, the United Nations, and Ground Zero. 

Here’s a quick tip sheet for things to look out for.

1. Immigration—In his “Video Message to the United States,” the pope spoke in both English and Spanish.  Today, almost 40 percent of the U.S. Catholic population is Hispanic.  You can read an interview with U.S. Ambassador Francis Rooney to the Holy See for some insight into the discussion over the issue of immigration, as well topics such as aid to Africa and the war in Iraq.

2. War and Peace—The pope will be meeting President Bush and other world leaders at the United Nations.  He will also be praying at Ground Zero in New York.  For some perspective on the Vatican’s responses to recent global conflicts, see Michael Sean Winters’ Washington Post editorial, “Wholly Different Angles on the World.”

3. Interreligious Dialogue—In addition to his controversial Regensburg lecture in 2006 and baptism of a prominent (ex)Muslim in 2008, the pope has also organized an interreligious dialogue between Catholics and Muslims to begin this November.  Francis X. Clooney, Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology at Harvard, reflected upon the pope’s dialogical tactics in a Commonweal piece, “Learning to Listen: Benedict XVI and Interreligious Dialogue.” 

4. American Political Ideology—Many scholars (some more qualified than others, including myself) have commented upon the changing political face of Catholicism in the United States.  In my opinion, John McGreevy’s article in the American Quarterly on “Catholics, Democrats, and the GOP in Contemporary America” is by far the most careful examination of the current religious/political landscape.  But, if you want to get a first-hand account of what McGreevy is saying about the recent coalition of neoconservatives and some American Catholics, look no further than First Things, the publication of Fr. Richard John Neuhaus’s Institute on Religion and Public Life, which describes itself as “an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.”  Read Neuhaus’s instructions on how to listen to Benedict.  Or watch him cover the pope’s visit on EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network).

I’m always fascinated by the scholarly and popular coverage of a papal visit.  From Samuel Morse’s conspiratorial diatribes against popery in the nineteenth century to Wolf Blitzer’s complementary commentary on the death of a Polish pope in the twenty-first century, it’s difficult to count the many ways in which people have represented popes and their messages.  There will be many people claiming to know what this visit means for the present and future state of the Roman Catholic Church around the world and in the United States.  I find myself enjoying the noise and confusion and debate and pontification (get it?).  And there’s usually a moment—a particularly poignant voice that silences the cacophony or an insidious gaff that creates an even louder disruption—when I’m reminded that all of this commotion matters.  But for the life of me, I don’t know how to make sense of it.

Studying Latino/a Pentecostals From a New Contributing Editor

Arlene Sánchez Walsh, our newest contributing editor, provides us with a glimpse of her work on Latino Pentecostals from Sojourners. Sánchez Walsh is an associate professor of Latino/a church studies and church history at Azusa Pacific University. She is the author of Latino Pentecostal Identity, which won the 2005 Hispanic Theological Initiative Book Award. She is working on a project for the Louisville Institute on race, ethnicity and American Pentecostalism and writing a textbook Pentecostalism in America (Columbia University Press). When she is not writing, she is kept very busy with an inquisitive five year old, and a not-so-sleepy 7 month old. Welcome aboard, Arlene!

A History of Separation
Arlene Sánchez Walsh

The article begins with a scene gleaned from a goldmine of resources for anyone interested in American Pentecostalism, especially the interaction between missionaries and Mexicans on the borderlands, Puerto Rico, and on the East Coast. Henry C. Ball is one of the more interesting missionaries, not because of any unique cultural/racial sensitivity (no doubt, Henry Ball was a missionary boss, racist, anti-Catholic, triumphalistic) but as a major figure in the Assemblies of God missions strategy of seeking Mexican converts on the borderlands, Ball needs to be reckoned with as a deeper figure than the pages of the Pentecostal Evangel would allow.

If we take Ball at his word, he was an eyewitness to many of the indignities that Mexican workers were subjected to throughout the early part of the 20th century: fumigation, unfair and unsafe work conditions, theft of wages, subtle racism and overt segregation. Ball's sympathies for his charges are intertwined with his disdain for their supposed sloth and hatred for their residual Catholicism. Ball never seeks to reconcile this cognitive dissonance, (not too different from most of us), with the earnest desire he claims to want to "save" Mexicans and partake in their new life as Pentecostals, one would assume that such magnanimous attitudes would dull the distrust, dislike, and out and out hatred Ball writes about throughout his career as an AG missionary (1912-70). Curiously, it does not. Content with denigrating Mexicans as he is trying to "save" them, Ball, like many early Pentecostal leaders (one might extend that to many of today's Pentecostal leaders), simply did not have the theological tools to develop a social conscience beyond coarse proselytism.

The Sojourners article takes the story of Latino/a Pentecostals in a different direction, it seemed proper though to note that one could make a major contribution to American religious history mining through places like the Flower Heritage Center at the Assemblies of God headquarters in
Springfield, Missouri. One could really begin to examine issues of race, ethnicity and power that fed into the rise of American Pentecostalism. Finally, if an enterprising scholar wanted to, they could move us all beyond the black/white dichotomy of American Pentecostal history and start writing a history of American Pentecostalism that begins on the borderlands and ends in a storefront in Newark, or a cemetery in East Los Angeles (don't get me started, I have too much to do already).

Deg's Dispatches, Part VII

Dispatches from LeConte Hall 323 – Part VII
by Darren Grem

How has religion been used to define and defend an “American way of life?” We pursued this question via the most recent section of our “uncoverage” tour of American religious history, and, to start off, I had my students reflect on the marvelous collection of FSA/OWI photographs that Colleen McDannell has collected for her Material History of American Religion Project. I asked them to consider both the artistic elements of these photos, but also how each used religion and religious groups to relate certain ideas about “genuine American-ness” and the “genuine American.” What did these photos say about Catholics and American identity? About rural Baptists? About Jews in northern farming communities? About African-Americans? After addressing these questions, we considered what these photos don’t say about American religion in the 1930s-1940s. The lack of religious conflict portrayed, as well as the exclusion of other prominent religious groups, seemed to reflect the desire of federal officials to simplify religious scenes and groups into role models for individualism, collective sacrifice, and cultural harmony. We continued our inquiry by looking at another cultural product from the 1950s that taught similar lessons in the midst of the Cold War – The Ten Commandments. How did Cecil B. DeMille use the Moses story to teach American moviegoers about America’s role in the Cold War? What was he trying to say about the state, “freedom,” individualism, and the implications of this conflict? How was he trying to appeal to multiple audiences and how might those audiences – Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, etc. – have responded to his efforts?

Since I thought both the photos and the film showed, visually, the constructed union between American religion and an “American way of life,” I also wanted my students to reflect on what various observers in the 1930s-1950s thought about this union. Selections from Will Herberg’s Protestant-Catholic-Jew reiterated many of the points made by the A/V selections, while selections from Dorothy Day’s The Long Loneliness and Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums complicated them. Could one retain a religious approach informed by, say, communist activism in an intensely anti-communist environment? If Protestant-Catholic-Jewish affiliations were acceptable, what did Americans think about other religious traditions, such as Kerouac’s quasi-Buddhist interests? Why or how did Day and Kerouac challenge – or perhaps affirm – the “American way of life” lauded by the FSA/OWI and DeMille? To firm up their answers to these questions, I finished off our inquiry into the immediate post-war period with a lecture on how American religions were affected by the broader social and political context of the Cold War. Through this lecture (and the week’s work), I wanted my students to reflect on how the Cold War could create a remarkable amount of religious awareness and consensus but, ironically, also encourage challenges to the religious status quo. As such, this section was as much a set-up for future weeks as anything else, preparing my students to see why later movements – whether led by civil rights activists, feminists, or others – used religion to affirm and reject certain elements of the “American way of life.”

Since I work on the post-war era, this section was more or less in my wheelhouse. The students, also, recognize much in the period, either from their own impressions about the 1930s-1950s, their parents’ and grandparents’ remembrances, or Tinseltown’s various portrayals. Given that, I also tried to remind them – as I’ve done throughout the term – that the past is a foreign country, the 1950s no less than the 1850s or 1750s. To be sure, its proximity to our own time makes it more recognizable, but that doesn’t mean that interpreting this period should rely on mere intuition. By making my students consider how both government and individuals united religious affections to national affirmation, I wanted them to detach themselves from easy interpretations about the naturalness of the period and its strange uniting of religion to an “American way of life.” In turn, I wanted them to understand how and why certain groups and individuals might be alienated or angered by such collusions, and why that might lead to political action. At this point, it’s hard to gauge how well this lesson took, but as we move to study the religious conflicts created by various liberation movements, I believe they’ll see how the “American way of life” could take on more religious meanings than they might expect.

Ed Blum's Airplane Reading, Part III (Plus A Discourse on Donkey Kong)

Book Teasers for Your Next Flights
by Ed Blum

I’ll be so happy when we’re past November. Then, we’ll be able to think, talk, and write (oftentimes not necessarily in that order) about issues other than the upcoming presidential election. I wondered what the main topics of conversation would be in the post-election world; will Tom Cruise reprise his role in Top Gun? will the United States initiate new wars in the Middle East or elsewhere? will Paul Harvey win another blog award? What will be the major conversations among American religious historians? These were the questions I asked as a boarded a plane for Houston and then Indianapolis last week. It was the official end of my book tour and then the second Young Scholars in American Religion meeting. After discussing links between lynching, crucifixion, religion, theology, and politics at the University of Houston, I was jetting off to Indy to play some football, critique proposals on everything from Puritans in colonial Virginia (or is it “puritans” in Virginia) to links between evangelicals and technology, from notions of religious liberty to the brutalities of religious studies. All of it, combined with Paul Harvey’s less-than-amazing athletic abilities (think Eli Manning, only just exactly the opposite), made for an incredible trip (I’ll forget the horrible night I spent stuck at the Dallas airport).

On the various plane trips, I had two manuscripts (well, actually one full manuscript and the introduction to another). The first was Charles Irons’s The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia and the second was Katherine Carté Engel’s Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America. Thankfully, neither book was about Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or John McCain. Neither book claimed to tell us who would win, how they would win, or how they would lose. Neither Irons nor Engel is interested in the arts of divination. These were historical works written by insightful, exacting historians. Praise God!

Irons shows how colonial and antebellum religion in the United States South – at least Virginia – was the fruit of interracial interaction. Particularly, southern proslavery Christianity spun out of white action and black reaction, black action and white reaction, interracial conflict, cooperation, understanding, misunderstanding, exchange, and outrage. Taking his cue from recent work on the abolitionist movements in the North, Irons reveals convincingly how African Americans – from unnamed farmhands to revolutionaries like Nat Turner – drastically altered the terrain of southern evangelicalism. The Origins of Proslavery Christianity is exactly the kind of history called for by Princeton historian Nell Irvin Painter. In Writing Across the Color Line, Painter urged historians to stop reifying segregation as if white and black worlds were ever truly separated. She urged scholars to defy notions of Jim Crow by showing the dynamic interactions between white and black voices, characters, aspirations, and imaginations. Charles Irons does this, and he does it … masterfully (oops, is that an acceptable word when writing about slavery?) The University of North Carolina Press has treated Professor Irons well, and for good reason. The book is available immediately in paperback and would be terrific for classes on the American South, antebellum America, and religion in American history.

After reading Irons’s work, I started to think about the long trajectory of white-African American religious interactions, how so often whites have based their politics, beliefs, and thoughts in relationship to African American religion. There are the messianic black leaders, like Martin Luther King, Jr., and his “I Have a Dream” speech; then there are the maligned prophetic figures, like Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Whether the antebellum world or the twenty-first century one, white and black religion seem to play games of tag, of cat and mouse, and of hide and seek. Then it dawned on me… I’m thinking about the present again; I’m thinking about politics. Even Charles Irons’s work, which his history at its best, forces me to think about now.

Closing up Irons’s manuscript at the airport in Dallas, I decided to take a break and play some video games. (I’m a sucker for a good game from the 1980s when video games weren’t about beating up police officers or honing military skill in WWII combat). Even in the realm of games, however, I could not escape the presidential election. I fed my quarters into Donkey Kong. Then I wondered – where was the donkey? I kept on playing, looking for a Democratic Donkey to flash across the screen, perhaps save me from turmoil, perhaps stop the evil Kong above from his relentless attacks. But I have news to the Democratic faithful; there was no donkey. He never came. My little plumber character died. I lost interest, and perhaps a part of my political soul.

I had to get out of the present; I had to get far away. And so I turned to the introduction of Katherine Carté Engel’s Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America. Like Irons, Katherine Carte Engel has written a story of exchange and interchange and of cooperation and conflict. Hers is in the form of markets and missions and centered on the Moravians of the middle colonies. The introduction took me away to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I was back in the eighteenth century, chopping down trees and bringing the Moravian gospel to Native Americans.

I was looking with Engel’s characters across the Atlantic to England and Germany, to the arrivals and departures of missionaries on the same boats with raw materials and manufactured goods. Engel would not allow me to escape the present, though, any more than my playing of Donkey Kong. Her work forced me to wonder about the moral implications of individualist capitalism, and the market consequences of missionary activity.

And, of course, then I thought of how often current United States foreign interventions are connected to missionary efforts (religious freedom for Protestants) and market consideration (who doesn’t want cheap oil). Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America should be out by the end of the year. It promises to be another great book of American religious history from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

I’m so grateful to Engel and Irons for writing with brisk prose, for attuning closely to local details and historical nuance. If only I could stop thinking about the present, about presidential elections, and about wars that could go on for one hundred years. Who knows what my next historical escape will be; alas, it will probably just teach me as much about the present as it does the past – like the fantastic works of Engel and Irons.

Masterful Pentecostals

Paul Harvey

Our blog contributing editor's work The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South is featured in the May 2008 Atlantic Monthly, with this appropriate and accurate assessment:

"Stephens's masterful account of how the South nurtured and altered a once-marginalized religious movement-- and how that religion influenced the region-- is the most fluent and authoritative synthesis of a complex and controversial subject." The Critics, Atlantic Monthly, May 2008, p. 102

Congratulations, Randall!

More to come soon on Ed Blum's latest airplane reading, and his thoughts about the Democrats and Donkey Kong.