Religion Dispatches
…e.” As Hannah Arendt describes in her masterful analysis of the history of American political philosophy On Revolution, the centrality of the Mayflower Compact in American culture emerged not just from its ability to bring people together, but from its role in establishing a tradition of voluntary covenants aimed at overcoming fear: The really astounding fact in the whole story is that their obvious fear of one another was accompanied by the no le…
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…er of languages, economic classes, ethnicities and cultures represented in American Catholic churches, American Catholics resist singularity. And it follows that they are going to be inconsistent in how they define mercy, as the hierarchy of the American church is often wont to demonstrate. Even the variety of American “Mercy Doors” found online defies comparison to the huge, ornately carved bass doors Francis pushed open at St. Peter’s when he de…
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…s, and much work remains to be done to render them more visible so that, along with white supremacism and patriarchy, we can work more effectively to dismantle them. *Full disclosure: I am in regular contact with the leadership of American Atheists, and I was slated to speak at the organization’s 2020 convention before it had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic….
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…ational Conference of Christians and Jews who, concerned about the rise of American nativism and xenophobia during the Depression, sought to foster a more open and inclusive sense of American religious identity. Prominent protestant clergy who were members of the NCCJ’s National Council eschewed efforts to convert Jews—a somewhat radical stance that, along with a determination to change entrenched attitudes towards non-Protestants, alienated many…
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…ligion Project, one of the latest digital means of mapping (and remapping) American Christianities and American religions more broadly. Run by St. Louis University professor Rachel McBride Lindsey, a scholar of religion and visual culture and author of the recently released A Communion of Shadows: Religion and Photography in Nineteenth-Century America, the Arch City Religion Project is a teaching project focused not only on making information (lik…
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…porters. Rock for Life’s willingness to operate within the institutions of American culture is in line with American Catholic attempts to create space for their voice within the liberal democratic system. In 1999, Kemper initiated a bold plan to counter a pro-choice petition drive sponsored by Rock for Choice. Rock for Choice gathered some 50,000 signatures in support of abortion rights on petitions which were then delivered to Congress and the Wh…
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…. And so, purity and prosperity are conjoined to produce a special kind of American exceptionalism—one that’s maintained in the sphere of the American evangelical family, and which, unavoidably, intersects with the political. This is where we see and hear the Christian Right. This American exceptionalism is then inseparable from national identity. The language of American evangelical exceptionalism demonstrates how evangelicals have “successfully…
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…ing you had to leave out? Of course! As it is, the book has chapters about American Jewish philosophy, religious conversion, the American west, Jewish identification with “Indians,” agricultural schools, Zionism, crime in New York, the Leo Frank case, and the Leopold and Loeb hearing. It would have been great to write chapters about sports, or about World War I, or about philanthropy, or about film. Or about ten or twelve more things I can think o…
Read More…flier/bulletin insert from the US Bishops Conference asking you to please contact your Representative and Senators immediately and urge them to fix these bills with pro-life amendments. The flier/bulletin insert includes a web address that allows you to send an email message to Congress with a click of a button. The bishops have asked for our swift action and the commitment of our prayers for this critical effort. Thank you for your help. We ca…
Read More…le thrown into a still pool of water ripples out from the center where the contact to the water is made? How the circles that go out from it get wider and wider? That’s the idea that I came up with to explain the merit of good deeds in increments. If the good you do benefits you, say at the point of contact, the one on one, then that is at least as good as that, times two. But when the good you do benefits yourself and others, say one other person…
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