The New York Dolls Gentlemen's Club Says: Refudiate the Casbah! Refudiate the Casbah!

Paul Harvey

We've got another post or two underway about the current predictable response to the proposed Cordoba Center (no, not a "mosque at Ground Zero") in lower Manhattan. I found this video tour most instructive -- a photo collage of some of the other establishments which currently reside on the "hallowed ground." Maybe Newt Gingrich has visited some of these, who knows?

[A side note: nothing in this blog post should be taken as a criticism, in the slightest, of the great 1970s glam-punk band the New York Dolls, whose work paved the way for one of my all-time favorite film musicals: Hedwig and the Angry Inch. If you haven't seen it -- do. Right now. The

last song on the film/soundtrack, "Midnight Radio," is a glorious religious statement about the power of music to help one rise above the circumstances].

More seriously, amidst the avalanche of web material on this tiresome, ginned-up pseudo-controversy, the single best analytical/historical piece I've seen comes from Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, up at Religion Dispatches; click here for it. The author puts this controversy properly in the historical context of the hysterical anti-Catholicism in the 19th century and other like episodes, traces some of the history of Muslim institutions in America, and ends optimistically:

It suggests that the proposed mosque and community center, which is modeled after the New York YMCA and Jewish Community Center, is a continuation of century-old efforts at community building and an attempt to represent Islam in lower Manhattan as American Muslims have understood and experienced it rather than through the actions of terrorists. The decision to allow the building of the mosques and community center is yet another episode in American history that moves us closer to the realization of our nation’s founding ideal of religious pluralism and freedom amidst a din of protests.

Ghaneabassiri, who teaches at Reed College, is the author of A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order (Cambridge, 2010) -- I had not seen or even heard of this text, but definitely looking forward to checking it out now.

Ghaneabassiri ends more optimistically than I would: the "founding ideal of religious pluralism" referred to was a lot more contested than that. And the incredible string of hateful commentary that has followed posts by Stephen Prothero and others over at CNN Belief Blog and other like places suggests something about the extent of religious hatreds prevalent today.

On the other hand, as Prothero points out in his latest post, Presidents Bush and Obama and Mayor Bloomberg have all rejected throwing out the politically expedient red meat of Islamophobia even when given the chance to do so. Some of Bush's statements were pretty remarkable in this regard, coming in close proximity to the 9/11 event.

Some other blog contributors here have more to say about this, so I'll turn it over to them. In the meantime, take that video tour, it's a nice respite from hallowed ground hyperbole.

Divided by Faith: Conference Schedule

Paul Harvey

Earlier we posted an announcement on the conference "Divided by Faith," a symposium at Indiana Wesleyan University about Michael Emerson's and Christian Smith's book of that title. Below is the conference schedule; as you will see, blog contributors Philip Luke Sinitiere and Edward J. Blum, and friend of the blog Charles Irons, are among the participants. Click here for more conference information, registration, etc.

Divided by Faith: A Decade Retrospective
October 15-16, 2010
Indiana Wesleyan University Student Center
Sponsored by the John Wesley Honors College

Friday
4:00-5:30 pm

Session 1: “Historical Realities”

* Dr. Miles Mullin, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary
“‘Are Negroes Cursed?’ The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelical Attitudes towards the Problem of Race in America”

* Dr. Phillip Luke Sinitiere, Sam Houston State University
“To Act Justly, Love Mercy, and Walk Humbly: Historical Reflections on Divided by Faith”

* Ryon Cobb, Florida State University
“The Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever? White Evangelical Racial Attitudes Across Time, 1977-2008”

* Dr. Peter Slade (Chair), Ashland University

6:00-7:00 pm
Welcome Dinner

7:15-8:30 pm
Opening Plenary
* Dr. Wayne Schmidt, Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University (moderator)
* Dr. Michael Emerson, Rice University

Saturday
8:30-10:00 am
Session 2: “Historical Alternatives”

* Dr. Charles Irons, Elon University
“Reconstruction, the Segregation of Southern Churches, and Divided by Faith”

* Dr. Edward Blum, San Diego State University
“When Jesus Crossed the Color Line: Interracial Exchanges at the Nadir of American Race Relations”

* Dr. Curtis Evans, University of Chicago Divinity School
“Demonstrating the Sufficiency of Christianity to Solve the Race Problem”

Bedford, Jones, and Leedy Banquet Room

10:00-10:30 am
Coffee Break
Hallway outside Bedford, Jones, and Leedy Banquet Room

10:30-12:00 pm

Session 3: “Glimmers of Hope”

* Dr. Brantley Gassaway, Bucknell University
“‘Glimmers of Hope’: Progressive Evangelical Leaders and Racism, 1970-2000”

* Paul Grant, University of Wisconsin
“Race, Memory, and the Evangelical Missions Movement: InterVarsity Christian Fellowship 1967-1973 and 1997-2003”

* Dr. Paul Rumrill, Liberty University
“Promoting Change: Transitioning from Uniracial to Multiethnic Corporate Worship”

* Dr. Julie Park (chair), Miami University

12:00-1:30 pm
Lunch

1:30-3:00 pm
Session 4: “Challenges Ahead"

* Dr. Erica Wong, Research Affiliate, Rice University
“Knotted Together: Congregational Mission and Racial Integration”

* Dr. Darryl Scriven, Tuskegee University
“The Call to Blackness in American Christianity”

* Dr. Korie Edwards, Ohio State University
“‘Much A-do about Nothing’?: A Discussion of Multiracial Churches in American Race Relations”

* Dr. Bruce Fields, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (chair)

3:00-3:30 pm
Coffee Break

3:30-4:30 pm
Closing Plenary: Dr. Michael Emerson

Black Preaching and African-American History

Randall Stephens

Listen to Sunday's All Things Considered (NPR) for a feature on black preaching from the 18th century to the present. Guy Raz speaks with Martha Simmons about her new edited volume, Preaching with Sacred Fire. The story includes audio clips of 20th-century sermons and some insight on how black preaching through the centuries opens a window onto the African-American experience.

For African-Americans, social movements tend to start in the pulpit. From slavery to civil rights to the election of the first African-American president, preachers have given sermons that moved black Americans to tears and to action. >>>

See also,

Edward Macknight Brawley, ed, The Negro Baptist Pulpit: A Collection of Sermons and Papers . . . (Philadelphia, 1890).

"Reminiscence of a Negro Preacher," Georgia Writer's Project, Library of Congress, November 7, 1939.

"A Holiness Preacher," South Carolina Writer's Project, Library of Congress, January 20, 1939.

Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux & Congregation, YouTube, late 1930s(?)

T. D. Jakes, "How to Fight with the Devil," YouTube, 2007.

Martin Luther King, "But if Not," Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, November, 1967, Internet Archive.

Colonial Church, Dig It

An interesting article from a couple weeks back. Note religious historian Charles Hambrick-Stowe's involvement.

"Archaeologist will probe ground for old churches," The Ridgefield Press, 1 August 2010.

Connecticut State Archivist Nicholas Bellantoni will use a radar device to search for the exact location of the original meeting houses of the First Congregational Church of Ridgefield.

The project is part of the church’s preparation to celebrate its 300th anniversary in 2012. . . .

Dr. Charles Hambrick-Stowe, senior minister, and David Hein of the church’s 300th anniversary committee studied old photographs and maps with him at the site, on Main Street in front of Jesse Lee United Methodist Church. >>>

Disestablishments

Chris Beneke

I just finished Steven K. Green's The Second Disestablishment: Church and State in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford 2010). My hunch is that the book will end up on the shelves of Supreme Court justices and their clerks, not to mention religious historians (who will probably use the library's copy) and constitutional law scholars (who can probably afford to buy their own). We needed a comprehensive account of the relationship between civil government and religion from the founding period through the early twentieth century. Now we have it.

The Second Disestablishment's title and subtitle are misleading. The first quarter of this thick volume is devoted to late eighteenth-century America, the era of what Green calls the “First Disestablishment.” It lasted from 1775 through 1833, though most of the critical work was accomplished by 1790. (Massachusetts, with its town-centered system of church support, was the chief laggard, stretching the national story of constitutional disestablishment out until 1833.)

Green takes the interpretive fight directly to those (generally called "Accommodationists") who maintain that the early federal system was designed to preserve existing, nonpreferential state establishments of religion. He makes a persuasive case that instead of buttressing publicly supported religion in the states, the Constitution and the religious clauses of the First Amendment actually sustained the states' momentum toward disestablishment.

Historians use the term "disestablishment" to describe the end of state support for churches and state-enforced religious doctrine. Green has a broader conception (a forthcoming book by David Sehat may take a comparably broad view). For Green, disestablishment also included the de-Christianization of the common law and the secularizaton of educational policy. The story is generally progressive: there was more evidence of disestablishment at the end of the nineteenth century than there had been in the late eighteenth or mid-nineteenth century. Still, what he calls "legal" and "cultural" disestablishment--the Second Disestablishment--followed a less direct trajectory than the First, constitutional disestablishment. In fact, the notion that Christianity was integral to the common law did not reach its apex until the antebellum period. As a consequence, anti-Christian remarks were still prosecuted and non-Christians still barred from serving as witnesses through the Civil War era.

A major turning point occurred in the middle decades of the nineteenth century when judges began to demand that prosecutions for blasphemy, Sabbath violations, and profane swearing be shown to constitute a discernible public “nuisance." For their part, Sabbath laws themselves were increasingly treated as contributions to public health and welfare, rather than divine injunctions. (When else would laborers rest, and how else were you going to keep them out of the pubs on Sunday?) At the same time, Bible reading in the schools was given secular justifications (Where else would children be taught morality?) and gradually abandoned. Law and culture were both de-sanctified.

The Second Disestablishment is judicious in its use of evidence, with only a few excursions into polemics. The argument flows easily from Green's detailed study of legal opinion and court decisions (more than 400 cases apparently). Along the way, he takes aim at another distinguished legal historian, Philip Hamburger, whose Separation of Church and State should be read in conjunction with this one. The debate over the history of church and state in America won't end with this book. But it just might be more interesting, and better informed.

Owned by the White People

Paul Harvey

Don't miss our contributor Christopher Jones's piece over at Juvenile Instructor: " 'Owned by the White People': America and Native Americans in Church History Sunday School Lessons, 1934." Going through some boxes of old material while packing and moving, Chris reflects on Mormon providentialist interpretations, as communicated in Sunday School lessons, on the founding of America, and on relations with Native peoples. Some of it is kind of standard-issue stuff for that period: heroic and virtuous Pilgrims, God preparing the way for the coming of our Christian civilization, and so on. I say "for that period" -- I should say, for that period, but of course for a lot of folks still standard stuff (see Barton, David and Marshall, Peter). Some of it is more LDS specific, explaining what events prepared the way for Joseph Smith. All fascinating stuff.

I have been interested in Native theological responses to all of this history, and how they have dealt with the issues inherent in this kind of Providentalism. One really helpful source, by way of introduction, is James Treat, ed., Native and Christian: Indigenous Voices on Religious Identity in the United States and Canada, where a variety of Native authors grapple with the contested identities of Indian and Christian, and the meanings of biblical myths as applied to their communities. An overview and response to the collection may be found here. In the book, the authors debate the question of what use can be made of sacred texts once those texts have been made into stories that explain, and usually justify, conquest and dispossession. Can those stories be reclaimed?

Well, I was going to blog more about this, but I don't want this to be the "spoiler" for some fairly extensive discussion of these issues (including nineteenth-century Protestant and Mormon providential explanations of the history of America) that Ed Blum and I are working on for our book Jesus in Red, White, and Black, which we're in the home stretches of now. For now, I was curious as to whether anyone had investigated mainstream Protestant (or Catholic) lessons/sermons from that era. I was wondering when these kind of Providentialist interpretations received more critical scrutiny in religious literature, whether that was something that came out of the 1960s and after, or perhaps emerged earlier with the innovations of the Indian New Deal and the rethinking of the "missionary enterprise" that was going on in the 1930s. Has there been a close study of that? Probably, but I can't think of it offhand.

Education for Liberation: The American Missionary Association from Reconstruction through Civil Rights

Paul Harvey

We've had a number of posts here in the past where folks have reflected on their experiences researching in various archives. One of my most enjoyable was a couple of weeks years ago at the Amistad Research Center at Tulane, where I dipped a bit into the massive archives of the American Missionary Association, the Congregationalist enterprise which after the Civil War was heavily involved in education for the freedpeople. At the time of this research, I was thinking of a good deal of the literature on postwar black education, leading to "industrial" schools; that literature focused on missionary paternalism. The postwar letters I read in the AMA archives gave me a much more sympathetic view.

The scholar Joe Martin Richardson has spent a career going through the entire AMA archives. In 1986, he published the first of his two volumes on the subject of the AMA and black education after the war, Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861-1890. I used that book extensively in my own work. It's the kind of meticulous, old-fashioned scholarship that we sometimes ignore as it generates little or no "buzz," but we all use in our own work, because we appreciate it when people have logged in the butt time at the archives, going through all those scrawled letters and slowly composing a portrait of the people who left those records.

Most recently, and just reviewed at H-Education and H-Law, Richardson has teamed with another scholar for a sequel. At H-Law, Adam Laats reviews Joe Martin Richardson and Maxine Deloris Jones, Education for Liberation: The American Missionary Association and African Americans, 1890 to the Civil Rights Movement (University of Alabama Press, 2009).

Laats writes:

A first read through the leading works of educational history could leave students with a decidedly negative image of what might be called the missionary tradition in U.S. education. Books such as James Anderson's _Education of Blacks in the South_ (1988) and David Wallace Adams's _Education for Extinction_ (1995) paint a convincingly dark portrait of missionary educators. Ignorant and condescending at best, aggressively genocidal at worst, these well-intentioned busybodies come off as a lesson for today's teachers of what _not _to do. Joe M. Richardson and Maxine D. Jones offer another perspective in _Education for Liberation: The American Missionary Association and African Americans, 1890 to the Civil Rights Movement_. The book picks up where Richardson's _Christian Reconstruction_ (1986) left off. Like Richardson's earlier work, it is notably sympathetic to the black and white educators behind the American Missionary Association's (AMA) long career in African American education.

The reviewer continues:

By the time Japan invaded Pearl Harbor, the AMA had decisively changed its approach to African American education in the South. In 1942 it officially shifted its focus to its colleges and its civil rights activism. That activism, centered in a new Race Relations Department, became an important tool in the formation of the civil rights movement. For example, starting in 1944, the AMA hosted institutes at Fisk University that brought together church, labor, academic, and legal experts to discuss interracial democracy and activism. The institutes, as the authors describe them, tended to the dry, academic side. And, as the authors note, it can be difficult to assess the impact of such institutes on the fledgling civil rights movement. However, with hundreds of participants over the twenty-five years of their existence, including such luminaries as Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, it is not a stretch to assert, as the authors do, that these institutes contributed a great deal to the developing ideology of the movement. If nothing else, as Richardson and Jones argue, bringing together a group of white and black men and women for weeks of living, eating, and working together in an aggressively white supremacist southern city made an important statement.

Read the rest here.