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Updated with Response: The Black Church is Dead—Long Live the Black Church

By Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

…y little to what most Americans should know about Christianity among black Americans. Most Americans are largely unaware of the diverse Christian congregations and denominational structures that comprise what is called the Black Church. For many Americans, the oratory, quasi-liberal politics, and charismatic swagger of Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Jesse L. Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Tavis Smiley are the primary windows into Christianity in black…

Ten Books to Read After You’ve Watched “Lemonade”

By Nyasha Junior

…e explores how faith traditions have served to nurture and sustain African-American communities. African American women’s spirituality is deeply rooted in a community of the born, the yet to be born, and those who have already passed over. Tracey E. Hucks Davidson College Yoruba Traditions and African American Religious Nationalism Religious historian Tracey Hucks explores African-American expressions of Yoruba traditions and how those notions con…

When Rabbis Seized Control of the Synagogue: The Role of Authority in American Judaism

By Zev Eleff

…communities—save for the Reconstructionists—identified Jewishness through one’s mother and not the father. I will focus on the substantial political and religious literature during this decade that stresses the “fracturing” and “polarization” of American life. The patrilineal decision decentered American Judaism, causing rifts within the various movements and shifting the center of concern from the United States to Israel. So far, I have delivere…

Before Black Twitter: How the Early Black Press Shaped American Discourse Around Race and Religion

By Benjamin P. Fagan

…Newspaper and the Chosen Nation is that, in the decades leading up to the American Civil War, black Americans used their newspapers to not only proclaim their status as God’s chosen nation on Earth, but to then apply that faith in black chosenness to a range of on-the-ground struggles for black liberation. So I hope that readers of the book not only come away with a better understanding of the contours of black chosenness, but also with a sense o…

Don’t Ignore the Role of “Christian Values” in Conservative Conspiracy

By Carmen Celestini

…n voters to stand up to the Illuminati with their votes in support of God, American values and their understanding of the American traditional family. Writing about the culture wars of the late 1960s and of today religion scholar Stephen Prothero observed that: In the contemporary culture wars, the maw of cultural politics opened wide and nearly swallowed civil society whole. Culture warriors continued to fight over religion, family, sexuality, ra…

Transforming America’s Israel Lobby

By Dan Fleshler

…lled for. It is up to us to give politicians, policymakers, and non-Jewish Americans the confidence that American Jews expect new approaches to the Arab-Israeli conflict and new ways of talking about it. Ending the Silence about Israel and Human Rights “It blows my mind that my Jewish brothers and sisters, who are with me on Darfur, who were with me on South Africa, can’t bend themselves to deal with injustice to the Palestinians,” said Reverend D…

Pariah or Charmed Hero: America’s Obsession with Jews and Israel

By Shaul Magid

…se he is black. This is the dirty little secret of a certain generation of American Jews. American Jewry has spent so much energy fighting anti-Semitism that it has refused to see racism (including Islamophobia) in its own ranks. Regarding the evangelical Christian Zionists, they won’t vote for Obama as they are the Republican base. So why pander? We should recall that the McCain/Palin ticket has said they would not sit down with the prime ministe…

American Civil Religion is Dead, Long Live American Civil Religion

By Peter Laarman

…cultures while they are also expected to understand and respect the common American culture; 4. We acknowledge the nobility of the American experiment even as we acknowledge certain “flaws” that God needs to “mend” (in the prayer-hymn wording of Katherine Lee Bates). Now suppose we update this problematic creed for the sake of telling the truth, junking the impossible notion that God has somehow chosen the United States for a special destiny or is…

The Brutality of the American Eden

By Paul Harvey

…rily a story of how religion has interacted with some of the big events of American history. American religious expression—its music and art, its stories of internal spiritual quests, its embodiment, its wild profusion of utopian groups, its history of ritual practices—will have to be found elsewhere. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. God knows, while Glenn Beck rants in Twitter-like aphorisms condensing David Barton’s execrable version o…

What NOT to Expect from the Pope’s US Visit

By Anthea Butler

…ents about doctrinal issues or specific political issues particular to the American scene. Francis, after all is a head of a global church. So whatever reading is given to his statements, those must not be filtered through popular hope or punditry, but through Catholic teaching. Pope Francis’s straightforward messages on issues like poverty are discordant to American ears because of the religious vitriol we are constantly hearing from pundits, pre…