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Religion and Resistance at the New National Museum of African American History and Culture

By Anita Little

…enslaved people who could have never imagined in their lifetime an African American president or an African American museum in our nation’s capital. It’s no small thing, we are at the evening of President Obama’s presidency. A lot of the people coming on opening day are coming partially to say goodbye to President Obama in what will be one of his last public acts as president. For me personally, it makes me think of the spirits of the ancestors, a…

Breaking Up With Marilynne Robinson Over Her Refusal to Acknowledge the Dark Side of Puritanism

By Peter Laarman

…apartheid South Africa, where a notoriously brutal regime that, just like New England, saw itself as a “New Israel,” survived until 1990. This is the darker side of Calvinism that Robinson has seldom if ever discussed, and it would really help her case for Calvinist “liberality” if she could also acknowledge the shadow side. For example, she might consider asking the Irish what they think of Oliver Cromwell’s Christian charity. To my mind it’s Mi…

Religion at Decade’s End

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…e requires some creativity and thoughtfulness; marking the appearance of a new decade, or a new century, proves to be far more challenging than remembering to change the year on the checks and Thank You notes I write in January. This time around, there’s no escaping the fact that our collective feet are now planted firmly in the twenty-first century. And it is worth reflecting on what this dawning perspective (of seeing ourselves as twenty-first…

Betrayed at the Polls, Evangelicals of Color at a Crossroads

By Deborah Jian Lee

…pay for it.” The audience roared with laughter, but “Jan,”* who is Korean American, and her Mexican-American husband, ushered their children out of the service. Jan asked her pastor for a public apology. When he shrugged off her request, she was shocked. He had been a spiritual guide for years. He officiated the funeral of her son. But now it was as if they didn’t know each other. She resigned from her role in the children’s ministry, and her fam…

American Jews: From Holocaust to New Age Hasidism?

By Martin Kavka

…aism, on a sociological note. Given the rate of intermarriage among Jewish Americans and the ways in which American culture no longer is content with prescripted roles for varying ethnic groups, Magid infers that American Jews now live in a postethnic culture. The ways in which Jews perform their particularism vary widely. In one way or another, all Jewish Americans today are Jews by choice, defining their identity as opposed to accepting others’…

Rent-Free Religion in New York’s Public Schools

By Katherine Stewart

…of Faith to challenge the City’s policy, and the court proceedings began anew. The Good News Club decision created a new legal theory for opponents of church-state separation. The Court held that religion is nothing but speech from a certain point of view, and therefore all religious activities are protected by the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment. “When Milford denied the Good News Club access… on the grounds that the club was religious…

Will the Religious Side with Workers?

By Peter Laarman

…s do more than anyone else to offer protection and a better way of life to new Americans. But even if theologically moderate Protestants begin to swing more toward a pro-union stance, what about other religious groups? Will younger members of the contemporary Jewish community who “live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans” (in Milton Himmelfarb’s still-apt phrase) abandon American Jews’ traditional allegiance to trade unionism? Will incr…

The Best Books Media of 2008

By Jeff Sharlet

…North Carolina)—but don’t let it dissuade you from reading Anthea Butler’s new book. Butler writes about lower class African-American Pentecostal women, a sadly understudied group. Focusing on the experience of sanctification, and the concomitant “dedication to both spiritual practices and temporal obedience,” Butler looks at how belief shaped these women’s understanding of self, community, and God, enabling them to “negotiate for and obtain power…

Ugandan Anti-Gay Fallout: New Laws, New Violence, New Underground Railroad

By Peter Montgomery

…ry to slow the momentum. All Africa has reported that Museveni will back a new version: “According to MPs backing a new version of the bill, the law will be watered down and focused on the threat of supposed homosexual recruitment of children.” Medard Bitekyerezo, an MP supporting the law, said it would not “harass” consenting adults. A Catholic Bishop said people frustrated by the Constitutional Court’s action “should not take the laws into their…

Robert Bellah’s Powerful Legacy: A Mixed Blessing for Religious Studies?

By Ivan Strenski

…e made a point of situating his notion of civil religion in a specifically American context. Bellah’s American civil religion appealed explicitly to Biblical archetypes like “God,” “Election,” “Providence” and such. They fit comfortably into the vocabulary and practices of American civil religion because of the very different historical conditions of the American founding. A notion like sacrificial death, for instance, found ready appeal at a time…