Jesus and Justice: Review by Steven Miller

I'm pleased today to guest-post Steven Miller's review of the important new book Jesus and Justice. Steven last posted here about the latest revelations of the Billy Graham-Richard Nixon connection.

Blue, Green, and Evangelical

Review of Peter Goodwin Heltzel, Jesus and Justice: Evangelicals, Race, and American Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009)

By Steven P. Miller

For optimists in progressive evangelical circles, the inauguration of President Barack Obama signaled a new era. The inaugural ceremony featured a minister from the evangelical world, conventionally understood—Rick Warren, heir to longtime Christianity Today editor Carl F. H. Henry’s tradition of social engagement. It also featured a minister whose theology progressive evangelicals admire—Joseph Lowery, peer of Martin Luther King, Jr., and beacon of the black church activist tradition. The hope—and “hope” is perhaps the key word in progressive evangelical circles, preferable to “progress” itself—was that Obama could weave these two strands together, instantiating a new brand of evangelical politics.

In Jesus and Justice: Evangelicals, Race, and American Politics, theologian Peter Goodwin Heltzel places himself on the vanguard of progressive evangelical hope. Heltzel, who writes from an evangelical theological perspective and a progressive political one, argues that a mature evangelical social movement has arrived and that it represents a synthesis of King, saint of twentieth-century prophetic Christianity, and Henry, voice of the postwar neo-evangelical movement. In this sense, Heltzel offers a dialectical interpretation of modern evangelical social activism. “As a new generation of evangelical activists embraces King’s vision for racial equality and reconciliation,” he argues, “and as evangelicals in the Henry tradition seek to live into his call to justice and reform, a growing intercultural evangelical coalition is embodying a prophetic politics of hope” (xxiii). This amounts to “a major paradigm shift in evangelical political life: the birth of a new prophetic evangelical politics” (4).

Heltzel’s synthesis contains elements of both theological aspiration and historical analysis. That is, he desires to explain how a King-Henry synthesis is theologically possible, while also explaining how it became historically possible. For his argument to have historical merits, then, Heltzel must offer “a new genealogy of evangelicalism” (11). And, here, despite my trained instincts as a fair reader, I confess having had some skepticism from the start. For as much as historians of religion like to rail against our colleagues who don’t “get religion,” those colleagues sometimes have little incentive to make the effort. Evangelical historiography, especially, has not fully overcome its insider origins and sometimes reflects agendas that non-specialists have few good reasons to care about. Might a work that so seamlessly merges theology with history only perpetuate this trend? So, while I hope that Heltzel is right about the emergence of a durable evangelical progressivism, I’m not sure that his thesis works as a description of evangelical history up to Obama era. But he sure does make you think. The rich tensions within his dialectic make this book well worth reading—and, if you’ll bear with me for a while longer, worth reviewing, as well.

I find much to admire about this ambitious book. Heltzel’s inclusion of “transdenominational populism” as a historically defining characteristic of American evangelicalism gives his narrative welcome breadth and allows room for conceptual creativity (7). Race stands as a central theme of American evangelical history. In Heltzel’s telling, American evangelicalism was a certifiably bi-racial phenomenon nearly from the start, before the Civil War era witnessed the tragic severing of “prophetic black Christianity” (including Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth in their roles as “prophetess”) from a white evangelicalism that abandoned its inclusive revivalist heritage (29, 30). “These two streams—white evangelical and black prophetic—continued on to clash during the civil rights movement but would begin to converge in the aftermath of the Iraq war in the early twenty-first century,” writes Heltzel (43). Something happened on the way to this convergence—namely, King and Henry. King, argues Heltzel, is not a new addition to the evangelical tradition, but rather a product of it. For Heltzel, evangelical theology stands with the black church and liberal theology as major influences on King. If King is a forgotten evangelical, then Henry is a forgotten prophet who created theological space for subsequent evangelical activism.

Heltzel then turns to four recent expressions of evangelical politics in all their richness and complexity: Focus on the Family (founded by neo-Victorian paterfamilias James Dobson), National Association of Evangelicals (whose increasingly well-rounded approach to custodial activism appears to have survived the Ted Haggard sex scandal), Christian Community Development Association (co-founded by the remarkable black evangelical activist, John Perkins), and the Sojourners community (associated with Jim Wallis, journalists’ go-to man for reminders that not all evangelicals like Dobson or liked Haggard). Heltzel’s case studies are notable for their nuance and attention to different, often competing theologies of Christ. He sees in Dobson, whose newsworthiness climaxed during the George W. Bush presidency, “the twilight of evangelical warrior politics” (5). The new “evangelical public theology is cast in a shade of blue green.” Blue represents the “long tragedy of black suffering,” green “an emergent holism” among evangelicals who reject the soul-centered individualism that Henry could never kick (203).

To return to my initial skepticism, I found myself asking whether “blue green” politics is a product of history or a product of Heltzel’s considerable skills as a theological and preacher. Perhaps Heltzel would gladly answer, “All of the above!” Observe the following unselfconscious blend of history and theology in Heltzel’s discussion of black Christianity as a species of evangelicalism: “Furthermore, the theological subjectivity and subversive political agency of black Christians is an integral part of renarrating America’s evangelical past and constructing a prophetic evangelical future” (15). My concern here is that some history might get sacrificed for the sake of hope. A few pages later, for example, Heltzel exaggerates the racial generosity of Jonathan Edwards and the anti-slavery activism of Charles Finney (16, 27). He likely also exaggerates the evangelical impulses of King. Heltzel’s strongest case there concerns King’s “deep commitment to biblical authority” (58). Yet King’s non-literalism, among many other things, distanced him from the avowed evangelicals of his own time. In the end, Heltzel could stand to be more self-conscious about the tendency of nearly everyone—left or right, blue or green—to embrace King. Likewise, calling Henry “a prophet before his time” in a book of this nature invites impossible comparisons with King, who really was an American radical (73). As Heltzel notes, Henry’s brand of Lordship theology was politically ambidextrous; John Howard Yoder and Francis Schaeffer alike reflected elements of it. Henry always has struck me as a conservative man, at heart, but one who wanted his public witness to be relevant. Heltzel rightly links Henry’s anti-statism with the libertarian heritage of his Baptist faith. But what seems radical when raging against the Puritan Biblical commonwealth seems, well, much less prophetic when fretting about federal civil rights legislation.

Perhaps I am holding Heltzel to an unfair disciplinary standard. After all, he is a theologian, not a historian, and surely I am not doing his theological moves justice. Rolling with that hypothetical punch, then, I close with a few normative thoughts of my own (reflecting, no doubt, my own shade of politics, which tends toward left-liberal wonkishness . . . blue red, perhaps?).

For starters, I wonder how Heltzel would respond to the suggestion that he and his fellow progressive evangelicals operate in the historical shadows not only of King and Henry, but also of the liberal Protestant tradition that their elders maligned and that they dismiss as no longer relevant. There are many understandable political reasons for not wanting to concede this debt, but some good and honest reasons for doing so.

Heltzel’s main problem with liberal Protestants could be that they are not in fact very religious. Fair enough. But, turning to my second thought, perhaps Heltzel’s brand of evangelical activism is not worldly enough. That is, he does not seem to grapple fully with the possibility that liberal statism can and will address many of his prophetic concerns. To call an injustice “systemic” at this moment in American history is to argue that the power of the government (“in other words, of the people,” to quote the Populists of yore) should be employed to redress that injustice. In good American pragmatic fashion, Heltzel lives with this assumption, but does not name it. I gather that Jim Wallis does the same, since (as Heltzel notes with ambivalence) Wallis more or less acted as a Democratic party adjunct during the 2008 election. In a strange way, progressive evangelicals remain reticent about making peace with the liberal state.

Perhaps federal protection for abortion rights, which Dobson’s warriors would see as part and parcel of the liberal state, helps to explain this reticence. Heltzel rightly calls out Dobson for casting the pro-life cause as the authentic heir to the abolitionist and civil rights movements. “The struggle to preserve unborn children,” Heltzel declares, “is different from advocating against more than two hundred years of slavery and one hundred years of segregation” (116). I could not agree more; but I would love to hear Heltzel explain why precisely Dobson is wrong. I understand the sensitive nature of the abortion issue for progressive evangelicals, but they are going to have to go there, sometime.

Finally, I was happy to see a book of this nature appearing from Yale University Press. In that sense, though, I found Mark Noll’s characteristically generous foreword to the book a little unnecessary. Granted, who wouldn’t welcome an endorsement from a historian of Noll’s gifts and stature? Still, such public torch passing in the pages of a university press book seems a tad insular (to use that loaded word again). Heltzel’s work can stand on its own.

Healing Waters and Streams of Joy

John Turner

Sixty-four weeks on the NYT trade paperback bestseller list and counting (#3 last time I checked). Reason enough to catch up on popular evangelicalism during an end-of-the-summer vacation.

W. Paul Young's The Shack has generated -- by my inexact estimation -- more excitement and sales than any evangelical offering since Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life. It must be fun to have five million copies of one's book in print.


While The Shack certainly affirms Warren's signature "It's not about you" opening, when it comes to the church Young inhabits a very different, anti-institutional stream of American evangelicalism. Young belongs to no church, and much of his first novel rails against the regulations, responsibilities, expectations, and judgments of church-based Christianity.

Last year, several prominent evangelicals, such as Albert Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, publicly criticized The Shack's purported heresies: a strong suggestion of universal salvation, a thoroughly equal and relational Trinity, and his depiction of God the Father ("Papa") as female. Those interested in theological discussions can find ample opportunities elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Young's book unfolds in roughly two parts. First, he begins with a tight, compelling narrative about a man emotionally stunted at the hands of an abusive father (Mackenzie "Mack" Allen Philips) who then endures the kidnapping and murder of his beloved young daughter. Theodicy, in a nutshell, the timeless question. Second, Mack travels to the scene of his daughter's murder (a shack with the bloodstains still visible) and meets God, an embodied, loving, and relational Trinity.

As a scholar of evangelicalism, it's hard to simply enjoy popular evangelical fiction (frankly, this is probably difficult for a large chunk of humanity). Moreover, The Shack generates obvious objections. The encounter with God often devolves into overly didactic theological lessons which interrupt almost any sense of narrative. Young's answer to the problem of evil is hardly original -- that God is working through human events for the ultimate good. Mack grows spiritually, and plays a role in the divine economy of redemption, by forgiving both his abusive father and his daughter's killer.

Those objections aside, The Shack is nevertheless hard to set aside. Young's imaginative portrayal of the Trinity is engaging, and his anti-institutional presentation of God appeals to a generation of evangelicals yearning for a more authentic and relational Christianity.

The veneer of machismo that graced the Promise Keeper's movement created a false sense (in my view) that evangelical men were eager and domineering patriarchs (partly put to rest by Brad Wilcox's Soft Patriarchs). Mack's conversations with God lead to divine weeping, tears that are "healing waters and a stream of joy." Regardless of complementarian niceties, evangelicalism is not moving in a patriarchal direction.

Perhaps The Shack's success augurs a shift in the mentality of American evangelicals. The Left Behind series originated in the mid-point of the Clinton presidency, a particularly beleaguered moment for evangelicals. Its apocalyptic narrative eventually ended in triumph. Rick Warren is hardly a triumphant evangelical, though both his massive institution-building and last year's presidential forum suggest a confidence about the role of contemporary evangelicals. Young, ultimately, suggests a far more quiet and subversive role for Christian believers -- agents of reconciliation seeking to heal relationships in a broken world.

Contemporary American Judaism: An Interview with Dana Kaplan

I'm very pleased to present a conversation with Dana Kaplan, author of the newly published book (from Columbia University Press) Contemporary American Judaism: Transformation and Renewal. Dana Evan Kaplan is Rabbi of Temple B'nai Israel in Albany Georgia and adjunct associate professor at Gratz College. He has published extensively in popular and scholarly forums on the topics of American Judaism, Reform Judaism, conversion to Judaism, and related topics. Many of his writings can be found on his website www.DanaKaplan.com.

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PH: How did you come originally to write CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN JUDAISM: TRANSFORMATION AND RENEWAL? Who primarily are you hoping to reach with it?

Ever since I was a child, I found American Judaism a rather unusual phenomenon. Being Jewish was and is very important to me, and I loved reading about Judaism and practicing the rituals, but there were so many inconsistencies! I guess you could say that the book is the culmination of a lifetime of trying to figure out the dynamics of American Judaism.I write so that I have an excuse to research. Working on Contemporary American Judaism gave me the opportunity to find out an awful lot about segments of American Judaism that I was relatively unfamiliar with. There were many surprises along the way. Some groups that I'd only vaguely heard about turned out to be extremely important, having played critical roles in the transformation that I describe. Other groups seemed to be more important than they actually were, perhaps because they are good at public relations.I decided to write the book after producing three books on Reform Judaism. I wanted to broaden my horizons and I wanted to find a way to learn more about my subject. Unfortunately, I underestimated the amount of time that would be required. The publisher and I had originally planned on bringing the manuscript into production after about 12 months of writing. In actual fact, it took about 4 1/2 years!During the entire process of writing the book, I constantly kept in mind that I was writing for a nonacademic reader. My deepest hope is that people of all types and all backgrounds will pick up this book and read at least a little bit. In order to make this a likely possibility, I included many personal stories, both my own and those of other people. The goal of the book is to educate but I also hope that it entertains. If the writing can be sufficiently engaging, the readership can be much broader than for the typical academic book published by a university press.

PH: You discuss in your book a "transformation" of American Judaism that in many ways is parallel to the broader movements in American religion among Christians that numerous scholars have noted -- a move away from denominational and other historic forms of identity, and a move towards "spirituality" as a primary focal point of American religious practice. Do you see Judaism as undergoing moves akin to those of other religious groups in America? Do you think there is something specific within American Judaism pushing in this direction?

That's a very difficult question. Most Americans are moving in certain directions and American Jews are likewise moving in those directions. But whether there is something "exceptional" about the Jewish experience in America is very difficult to determine. What is obvious is that Jews are both and ethnic and religious group and so that makes them different from other religious groups. So while a Filipino American can be Catholic or Protestant or have another religion, most Jews are Jews ethnically as well as religiously. However, recent studies have shown that this dualism has weakened substantially over the past two or three decades.

As I explain in Chapter 2 in my book, Americans see themselves on spiritual journeys. These journeys are fluid, and our spiritual experiences unfold gradually, leading in all sorts of directions. These journeys have a definitive starting point, and they will eventually have an ending point, but in the decades in between there are all sorts of surprises, as we explore our spirituality in the context of what is happening in our work and home lives and in our community, the country, and the world.

Individualized spirituality threatens institutional religion because if people can find spiritual meaning on their own, then they don't need organized religion. American Judaism is particularly vulnerable because Judaism is so interconnected with Jewish peoplehood and also because Judaism is such a small religious group in terms of numbers. If every American Jew went on their spiritual search without regard to ancestral tradition or community influence, that would mark the end of organized Jewish religion in the United States. But that has not happened.

But that is not to say that everything is the same as it was before World War II. American Jews today are much less likely to simply accept the traditions that they were taught by their parents. Rather, many want to experience intense spirituality and will undertake a serious search for it if they do not feel that it exists in their present religious environment. Some of those dissatisfied with what they believe to be the lack of spirituality in Judaism may switch religions entirely but many others may seek to find alternative sources of spiritual wisdom that they can bring back with them to the synagogue.

PH: Conservative evangelical Christians have developed a particular relationship with Jewish Americans in recent years, based on a shared interest with Israel -- but of course there are very different reasons for that interest. How do you feel about this relationship, to the degree there is one, and to what degree do you think American Jews understand the conservative evangelical worldview which supports Israel largely for that country's role in the evangelical understanding of the "end times" -- i.e. what needs to happen to bring on the return of Jesus Christ?

Professor Yaakov Ariel has written a wonderful book on this topic, which outlines the changing nature of the relationship between evangelical Christians an American Jews throughout the decades. Even the most assimilated Jew is aware of how badly we were persecuted by Christians over the past 2000 years. There is a fear of Christianity burned into our psyches. But the world has changed and it has changed rapidly. Today, we can form alliances with groups that would've loathed and rejected us two or three generations ago. I see no reason why we should hesitate, as long as we are aware of what the other side believes and what implications that might have.

There was a recent controversy in Huntsville, Alabama where the local Reform Rabbi took a strong stand against cooperation and collaboration with fundamentalist Protestants who are very keen to support the state of Israel. Speaking personally, I feel that this is a potentially valuable relationship which should be nurtured. Of course, both sides understand that we have fundamental religious differences. But if we can agree on the importance of supporting the state of Israel, I see no reason why we cannot work together. But I am a minority voice in the Reform movement on this topic.

Let me say a few words about interfaith dialogue. Orthodox Jews have a ban on talking about theology with Christians. There have been a number of attempts by liberal Orthodox groups to engage with Christian thinkers but on the whole, interfaith dialogue is primarily a non-Orthodox endeavor. Non-Orthodox American Jews, however, have very little in common theologically with fundamentalist Christians. Likewise, our positions on social issues are almost diametrically opposed. On the other hand, we share common theological assumptions and similar social positions with moderate and even more so liberal Christians. Yet, some liberal Christians hold political views on Middle Eastern politics that concern us. I phrased that very diplomatically. Speaking personally, I find it very hard to feel comfortable with individuals or groups who support policies that I believe endanger the existence of the State of Israel.

In Albany Georgia, we have run an interfaith forum for several years. It always drew large crowds, although this past year we had much more trouble than ever before. I'm hoping to get it back on track this year. It was one of the most exciting programs that we have ever had -- four speakers from different faith traditions addressing specific questions of faith or practice. There were some tense moments, as you might imagine, but it was very exciting. That is the sort of openness that the non-Orthodox movements allow that I love. The Christians and Muslim who participated also seemed to share my excitement, realizing they were involved in a unique activity forAlbany, a small city in the Deep South.

PH: You devote considerable space in your text to analyzing the vigorous participation of American Jews in various Buddhist movements, from Ram Dass (nee Richard Alpert) into various Buddhist spiritual practices in recent years that have held wide appeal to Jews. How do you explain this attraction, and what does it say to you about American Judaism?

There are many ways to understand the attraction of Buddhism for so many American Jews. Each of the explanations has an ideological agenda, so I want to let you know that up front. Many American Jews who grew up in the 1950s 1960s and 1970s felt that the Judaism that they observed in their homes and synagogues was vapid, virtually completely empty of spiritual meaning. They were thirsting for something and some of them founded in Buddhism and other forms of Eastern meditation.

It also had an added attraction of having no negative associations with earlier events in Jewish history. As I have mentioned and you are already aware, Jews have been periodically persecuted by Christians for 2000 years and this has made Christianity repulsive to many of us. While most American Jews do not associate Islam with historic persecution, they see it as a prime source of anti-Israel ideology as well as the inspiration for Al Qaeda and other Muslim terrorists group. So they're not likely to embrace either of these religions. An American Jew might find Christianity or Islam spiritually fulfilling but they would be frightened of becoming a follower of religions that had served as the inspiration for so much hurt. Of course, I'm not suggesting that these religions are responsible for the acts of certain individuals -- I'm only talking about perception. For many Jews looking for an alternative approach to spirituality, a religion with no historical associations is highly preferable. Buddhism has absolutely no connection with any memories of pogroms or other types of persecutions.

There are many substantive reasons as well. Perhaps the best known JewBu, Sylvia Boorstein, explained what attracted her to Buddhism. Boorstein,one of the founders of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California, was introduced to Buddhism “at a time in my life when I was frightened by my sense that life was too hard, too fragile, to accept without despair. I doubted it could be otherwise.” In 1977 she attended her first Vipassana retreat, which focused on what the Buddhist masters call mindfulness. “I think what most excited me. . . about Buddhism was that it offers a succinct explanation for suffering.” While pain is a given in life, people can learn to end suffering through their own spiritual practice. There were no beliefs that had to be accepted, but rather there was a spiritual practice that needed to be taken on and tested out.

Boorstein discovered that the first of the Four Noble Truths was that life is fundamentally unsatisfying because of its fragility. Since life is temporal, by definition nothing lasts. Boorstein was greatly relieved to hear this idea was one of the central teachings of the Buddha. She had spent the previous several years preoccupied with the idea that life was tragically flawed and had not found a way to relieve her obsession with this negative thought. “It was such a relief! My reading of how life is was not a personal melancholy misperception. My response to it was melancholy, but here were teachers who said that it was possible to cultivate wiser responses.”

Many Jews who have discovered Buddhism report that Eastern wisdom opened their eyes to an entirely new way of looking at the world. Unfortunately from a Jewish point of view, many of these JewBus have been lost to organized Jewish life. Buddhist wisdom suggests that true spirituality does not require a fixed identity. The deeper that a person becomes involved on his or her spiritual path, the more divergent the path becomes from their previous religio-ethnic identity. Ideologies become crutches and religious traditions become part of the material world that no longer seems truly important.

Buddhist spiritual practice tries to orient people so that they let go of preconceived notions--- including particularistic identities such as ethnic Jewishness. As the novice gets more in touch with who she truly is, it becomes easier to let her subjective concepts of culture fall away. The Buddha, who is regarded as a spiritual teacher rather than a deity, said that “when I obtained Absolute Perfect Enlightenment, I attained absolutely nothing.” Once a person realizes that nothing truly matters, then it’s possible to appreciate that everything that’s happened to us in life actually does matter. That is why some Jewish Buddhists do eventually reengage with their Judaism, even if they grew up with little Jewish tradition.

PH: Discussions about American Judaism in contemporary America often have focused on intermarriage, since American Jews have out-married at extremely high rates (rivaled only, I think, by certain Asian-American groups, especially Japanese Americans). You have titled one chapter, "Facing the Collapse of the Intermarriage Stigma." Briefly, what do you mean by that title, and to what degree will high out-marriage rates affect the future of American Judaism?

I'm glad that you noticed! While some of those living in large East Coast cities may not see things the same way, I believe that the parental battle against intermarriage has failed. Grown children are marrying partners that they meet and fall in love with regardless of religious backgrounds. While I am not necessarily advocating that the American Jewish community give up the fight, I think that we have to look beyond the discouragement of intermarriage and find effective strategies for bringing interfaith couples into our congregations and our religion.

PH: In your conclusion, you write, "American and Jewish values are increasingly seen as indistinguisable," and contrast that with an earlier generation who saw being Jewish and being American as two different components of their identity. Can you elaborate a bit on that point?

My book begins in 1945 with the selection of Bess Myerson as Miss America. Myerson was crowned on September 8, 1945, four months to the day after the surrender of Nazi Germany. American Jews beamed with pride because they felt that her crowning symbolized a new level of social acceptance that they had long craved but had been elusive. Earlier, when Myerson had gone to Atlantic City to compete in the pageant, a Holocaust survivor with concentration camp numbers tattooed on her arm asked Bess in Yiddish if she was Jewish. When Myerson said that she was, the woman hugged her. “If America chooses a Jewish girl to be Miss America, I will know that I’ve to a safe country.”

It wasn't only Holocaust survivors who felt insecure. While the United States had been a wonderful place for immigrants of all types, minority groups still felt that they were tolerated rather than accepted. While they had tried their best to learn to become Americans, the immigrant generation had come with different values, as well as a different language and a different culture. It took a long time to really become an American in the full sense of the word.

There was the often repeated remark that Jews should behave Jewishly in private but act American in public. This idea was taken from the Russian Jewish thinker Yehuda Leib Gordon who quipped, “Be a Jew in your home and a man on the street.” The idea behind this was that it would be inappropriate to be "too Jewish" in public. There was indeed some basis for this inhibition. Many white Protestants Americans felt that immigrants should blend into society, and in fact should melt away completely. In response to this expectation, an entire generation of American Jews (and other types of hyphenated Americans as well) learned one set of behaviors for their home and community and another set of behaviors for the outside world.

This schizophrenic existence is long gone, with the partial exception of the Haredi (fervently Orthodox) community. American Jews feel very welcome here, not only because levels of anti-Semitism have declined tremendously (although the African-American community still shows substantial hostility towards Jews in some polls) but also because we have played such a major part in molding the culture. Most of us have reached the point where we no longer distinguish "Jewish values" from "American values". This point was previously made by another scholar so I am not taking credit for this observation, but I talk about it in my book because it helps to explain many of the attitudes and behaviors that would otherwise be inexplicable.

Optimists are hopeful that the Jewish community can find ways to engage the as yet not committed; maybe they can. Any Judaism that the iPod or digital generation creates will almost by definition be constantly evolving and probably transitory. Some of the more creative ones will certainly use Jewish themes in their novels, films, and plays, and Americans will continue to hear about Jewish neuroses and how Jews deal with their identity issues. The question that I implicitly try to raise in this book is how that might affect the future contours of American Jewish religious belief and practice. The answer to that is unknown. What is known is that increasing numbers of American Jews no longer make a direct connection between their Jewish ethnic background and Judaism as a religion. Further, they feel that they can embrace a number of different identities that either may emerge naturally from their family and educational background or may be self-selected.

PH: Jews historically have been disproportionately involved in left-liberal politics in American history, seen especially during the civil rights era. In more recent years, a number of prominent Jewish intellectuals have been identified with the neo-conservative movement, including some who served in the Bush administration. What, briefly, do you see as the future of Jewish political attitudes. Do you think Jewish Americans will follow more of a liberal/conservative divide like America more generally, or will a certain core of Jewish values make the Jewish American take on politics distinctive?

My book focuses on American Judaism. I have tried to limit myself to issues that have religious significance. That is why there is no mention in my book about famous American Jewish people, whether actors or writers or politicians. But I could not help referring a little bit to political issues because people's values determine their political viewpoints just as those same values determine their religious beliefs. It will probably not surprise you that many of those political liberals who were active in the civil rights movement were Reform Jews, naturally gravitating towards a liberal interpretation of Judaism. Likewise, many of the neo-conservatives either come from religiously traditional backgrounds or have embraced traditional Judaism.

I write extensively about Jack Abramoff, the disgraced neo-conservative lobbyist, in my section on the baal teshuva movement, in which young Jews who had been raised in non-Orthodox homes in the 1960s and 1970s started “becoming religious.” Abramoff was one of the best-known baal teshuvas, highly respected in the Orthodox community for his decision to become Orthodox until scandal destroyed his reputation. On January 3, 2006, he pled guilty to charges of conspiracy, tax evasion, and fraud in a plea bargain with prosecutors as part of a larger corruption investigation. “I had lost a sense of proportion and judgment. God sent me 1,000 hints that He didn’t want me to keep doing what I was doing. But I didn’t listen, so He set off a nuclear bomb.” Abramoff was photographed leaving the courthouse in a black hat identical to the ones traditionally worn in the yeshiva world. Blogs speculated whether the hat was his way of trying to mobilize Orthodox support on his behalf or whether it was covering a yarmulke that he did not want to show so as not to commit hillul Hashem, disgracing Judaism publicly. It was a uniquely American Jewish moment.

For many years, it seemed that the Orthodox were gravitating closer and closer to the conservative Republicans and the non-Orthodox were firmly in the liberal camp and staying there. In very general terms, this remains true that you have to be careful not to carry this generality too far. For example, there are many differences between Orthodox voters and Christian fundamentalists and conservative Catholic citizens. While they may all vote for conservative Republicans, they differ significantly on numerous issues, including some of the most sensitive moral and ethical questions we face as a society. On the other end of the spectrum, not all Reform and Reconstructionist Jews are liberal. It may seem that way if you read the New York Times every day, but it is not actual fact.

God's Stimulus Package

Paul Harvey

Rev. Ike's passing and the financial crash of 2008 notwithstanding, the prosperity gospel rolls along, thanks to the likes of Rev. Kenneth Copeland and numerous others. Laurie Goodstein reports on this American perennial in today's NY Times. The nice conclusion to the piece:

“Any time a worried thought about money pops up in your mind,” Mr. Savelle continued, “the next thing you do is sow”: drop money, like seeds, in “good ground” like the preachers’ ministries. “Stop worrying, start sowing,” he added, his voice rising. “That’s God’s stimulus package for you.” At that, hundreds streamed down the aisles to the stage, laying envelopes, cash and coins on the carpeted steps.

Jon Walton calls the subjects of the piece "spiritual pickpockets." He also, in a separate piece, reports on the role of Kenneth Copeland and numerous other properity preachers in battling health care reform and spreading the urban myths about death panels and the like (something I can confirm after a survey of local AM radio here in the heartland of the libertarian/religious right, where our system of paying more and getting less apparently must be preserved, and the uninsured are the equivalent of the undeserving). That's one way to go viral, I guess. Jon points out the financial stake Copeland et all have in keeping their followers away from quality affordable health care:

But, then again, maybe Copeland’s own personal wealth is dependent on his follower’s bad health. If some of his “financial partners” had the privilege of receiving medical care for their illnesses, maybe they wouldn’t be as quick to put money at Copeland’s altar in hopes of their healing.

The First Amendment and Religion in the Total Institution: An Interview with Winni Sullivan

Paul Harvey

Many years ago I was in the Young Scholars program with Winni Sullivan, currently director of the Religion and Law program at SUNY-Buffalo. She has since gone on to publish The Impossibility of Religious Freedom and Prison Religion, two outstanding studies based on individual cases where religion intersects with the law. Over at Immanent Frame, Nathan Schneider has a great interview with Winni, who reflects on scholarship about religious freedom and the First Amendment, on the "impossibility of religious freedom," on how courts are inadequate places to figure out controversies on what "religion" means, and on her most recent work Prison Religion: Faith-Based Reform and the Constitution (referenced by Kip Kosek in his post about "religion in the total institution" a few days ago). A brief excerpt:

The problems with defining religion play a central role in the argument that you’ve been developing over your last two books. Why can’t we—as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said of pornography—simply know it when we see it?

The word “religion” comes out of a particular history. There are various ways of telling that history, but one could say, from the perspective of someone like me who is interested in church/state issues, that the notion that religion is a discrete, bounded aspect of human culture and society is something that emerged in the early modern period, parallel with the emergence of the modern state. With the secularization of the state and the differentiation of socio-cultural formations within society, religion gets reinvented as something separate. But the context in which that happens shapes what religion means. Politically, it comes to serve the modern state by providing a location in which modern citizens are trained to be moral, functioning members of society. This is a very particular understanding of religion, rooted in a particular kind of Protestant Christianity. Naturally, once modern societies try to expand that role beyond Protestant Christianity, they begin bumping up against different understandings of where religion ought to fit.

Why There is so Much Sex in Christian Conservatism, and why Jerry Falwell is in Bed with Milton Friedman

Paul Harvey

Earlier on the blog we posted several entries about Jon Shields, Democratic Virtues of the Christian Right and Jason Bivins, Religion of Fear. I found the contrast between the two fascinating -- a persuasive and statistically detailed political science study showing the skillful, civil, and persuasive ways certain Christian conservative groups have made their arguments in the public square on the one hand, and a searching cultural examination of the ultimately anti-democratic and anti-pluralist products consumed by some of these same folks, on the other.

Jason's book came out before the Obama "birther movement" hit the news -- he'll have to add another chapter in the next edition. While you're waiting for that, the blog post "Bircher/Truther/Birther" gives an excellent historical analysis placing this canard within the paranoid style of American politics traced brilliantly by Richard Hofstadter, a theme developed further by David Brion Davis's "Some Themes of Counter-Subversion: An Analysis of Anti-Masonic, Anti-Catholic, and Anti-Mormon Literature." Both showed how "American diversity creates American paranoia"; how, we might say, Randolph Bourne (the great progressive-era thinker known for his essays "Trans-National America" and "War is the Health of the State") is related to Glenn Beck.

I've been thinking over this recently watching the cacophonously unenlightened health care "debate," and wondering where all the flowers of civility have gone as the religion of fear, paranoia, and just plain lunacy takes center place in the public square. And hell, I wasn't going to do this, but while we're on the subject of boundless paranoia and before we get to the more scholarly matters of this post (and please, Professor David Brion Davis, can you write an article on Glenn Beck? -- pretty please?):

Ok, now on to the matters at hand. In Freedom's Coming, I briefly speculated on how and why gender had supplanted race as a central organizing force for southern Christian conservatives. I made no attempt to mount a full argument on this point, but merely threw it out as a suggestion. Much to my surprise, nearly every review of the book addressed this point as if it were central (rather than tangential) to the entire project. Since then, it's been nice to see other scholars (including our own Seth Dowland on this blog) take up this issue and give it a serious analysis, way more than I did.

In that spirit, a must read (and a fun read) for you scholars out there: Bethany Moreton, "Why is There So Much Sex in Christian Conservatism, and why Do So Few Historians Care About It," Journal of Southern History, August 2009, 717-739. Yeah, you have to be a member of the Southern Historical Association to get the journal.

The piece, of course, takes its title from Leo Ribuffo's well-known article of 1994, "Why Is There So Much Conservatism in the United States, And Why Do So Few Historians Know Anything About It," from the American Historical Review.

We know a lot more now about the history of conservatism in America than we did when that 1994 article was published -- indeed, you can't heave an egg out of a Pullman car window these days without hitting a scholar who is working on the history of conservatism in America, or a book on the subject (with apologies to H. L. Mencken --and while you're heaving that egg, try at least to laser target one of those wingnuts carrying around the Obama with Hitler mustache signs, screaming incoherently at town hall meetings in some grotesque parody of one of FDR's Four Freedoms, and reading Sarah Palin's fact-free hysterics about Obama's plan to mandate killing grandma not to mention her own child) -- but most of this work addresses political, social, and religious conservatism.

One shortcoming of some cultural history is a tendency to be disconnected from hard issues of economics. Which raises the question: what's the economy got to do with sexuality and religious conservatism? This is related to the larger question of how libertarians can mount alliances with religous conservatives despite their obvious philosophical differences. Bethany Moreton (author of To Serve God and Wal-Mart, reviewed here in the NY Times) introduces the issue this way: "How did the self-styled 'values voters' behind deregulation, privatization, and globalization come to see nonreproductive sex as the central threat to America's soul? In short, how did Milton Friedman wind up in bed with Jerry Falwell?" Moreton goes on to link developments in political economy with a particular sexual economy in ways that help answer the question, "What could white women . . . have found so appealing about a hierarchy in which they lost out?" I'm not persuaded by everything in this piece, but so what. There's not an uninteresting sentence in the whole article, and it moves the conversation forward wonderfully.

To that Milton Friedman/Jerry Falwell tryst, you better add a third (at least): Catholic conservatives. Marian Ronan's Tracing the Sign of the Cross: Sexuality, Mourning, and the Future of American Catholicism, investigates some similar issues with post-Vatican II Catholicism (albeit without Moreton's emphasis on political economy; this is a literary/cultural study). In this interview from the Columbia University press website, the author (who keeps her own blog here) explains how sexual prohibition took the place once occupied by doctrine in Catholicism:

. . . at the beginning of the 1960s, white American Catholics were poised to achieve the idealized way of life our immigrant forebears had struggled to attain. Many of us were also convinced that with Vatican II the democratic vision of the church we had long favored was going to become dominant. Yet by the end of the decade, the "American dream" had exploded into social conflict and the Vatican was fighting our much anticipated liberalization of the church with increasing ferocity. Then came the economic downturn of the 1970s and the refusal of women's ordination. Our losses were enormous. Yet for reasons that I explore in Tracing, many American Catholics did not engage and work through those losses. Instead, we—conservatives and liberals alike—threw ourselves into the Catholic culture wars. Central to this development was the decision on the part of the episcopacy and the Vatican to shift the center of the Catholic faith from doctrine to sex and gender prohibition, a shift that contradicted what many of us had come to believe about the church. In truth, the Vatican had been focusing more and more on abortion and contraception since its massive losses in the liberal democratic revolutions of the nineteenth century. But after Vatican II, the gloves came off. Sexual prohibition replaced doctrine as the heart of the Catholic faith, and although the governance structure after Vatican II remained monarchical, so that we still have little or no impact on what the bishops and the Vatican do, many of us have spent much of our lives fighting against it. And let me be clear, I include myself in this "we." We believed this was the right thing to do, but it also protected us from mourning our enormous losses.

So, it's not a Protestant thing. The move from race, doctrine and whatever else to gender as a central defining point of proper order seems to be the point where someone combining adroit skills in the history of political economy with the tools of religious studies analysis could make her mark. Anyone ya'll know out there doing that?