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Pawlenty Stars in American Civil Religion: The Movie

By Michael J. Altman

…in Wall but not McCarthyism. It’s an ad for a book (a book that isn’t selling that well, apparently) and not a history lesson. But like history, every national politician offers American voters a narrative of who they are and what America means. Sometimes bad history can be good politics….

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…

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

By Zev Eleff

…o write Who Rules the Synagogue?: Religious Authority and the Formation of American Judaism? Zev Eleff: In 1991, historian Jon Butler called for scholars of American religion to consider how “church authority” worked to shape “lay faith.” A few biographers had heeded Butler’s call, but I felt that there was much work to be done. I was convinced that religious authority and its overall impact had been overlooked as a valuable feature of religious l…

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…

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…

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

By Carmen Celestini

…a common lens of “American values” and religion. The Moral Majority of the 1970s and 1980s, also used a cohesive conception of Christian values articulated through political policy, regardless of dogma, to mobilize a political bloc. Leaders of the Moral Majority, such as Tim LaHaye and Pat Robertson, both linked the liberal takeover of the American political system to the Illuminati to create a New World Order, and asked Christian voters to stand…

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…

The Brutality of the American Eden

By Paul Harvey

…oader modernist-fundamentalist divide, Eisenhower presiding over a generic, 1950s American religion, Martin Luther King Jr. condemning America’s role as a “moral policeman,” and the religious right’s somewhat disillusioning experience with politics during the Reagan and second Bush presidencies. A few other stories find their way in: the Spanish oppress the Puebloans; Jefferson cuts up the Bible, saving only the moral maxims; Rabbi Wise invents Re…

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…

Secularism in the US is Larger, More Diverse and More Dynamic Than Ever, But You Wouldn’t Know it From the Media

By Chrissy Stroop

…and humanist demographic, OnlySky aims to serve a much broader audience—the 1 in 3 Americans who identify as having no religion,” says Zuckerman.“The hope is that OnlySky will be the main go-to media hub for secular, post-religious Americans—or for people simply interested in a secular slant on the world and on current events.” Zuckerman and Levin, OnlySky’s director of advocacy, both share the general frustration with media misrepresentation of s…