Religion Dispatches
…cob, Lynn Hunt, Henry Yu, and others. I wanted to thickly describe African American Judaism from microhistorical, Black Atlantic, and African American Studies perspectives. The question of “authenticity” that had dominated the accounts of so many white Jews was of little interest to me. What had gone missing in the limited literature on the topics was an attempt to tell the story of Black Israelites as an instance of African American history (in t…
Read More…his is the consequence. Once you accept the historically flawed idea that “American” equals “Christian,” you of necessity must see “Muslim” as “anti-American.” Muslims do not accept the fundamental belief of Christianity, that Jesus was the Son of God and savior of the world. Thus, in this closed world view, they are “anti-Christian” and so are also inherently “anti-American.” This is one of the dangers of the increasingly prominent idea that the…
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…ainly targeted Catholic and Muslim Palestinians. This view was typical for American and European missionaries as well. In the American Christian imagination, Ottoman “Christianity and Islam were coupled,” Ussama Makdisi argues, “as the two pillars of temporal and spiritual corruption that had to be struck down.” Twain’s comic depictions of a desolate, barren, and neglected Palestine later serve as documentary evidence in both Christian Zionist and…
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…om their Americanness. Should American Jews be hyphenated citizens? Jewish-American or American Jew; hyphen or no hyphen. Jews as an ethnos, like Irish-Americans, or Jews as carrier of a religion, like American Catholics? The American Jew lives in the anxiety of the hyphen, and flourishes there. The hyphen allows for considerable leeway in terms of legitimate negotiation between one’s Jewish and American identity. Today it seems that the complex n…
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…some of the biggest misconceptions about your topic? “The vision of Muslim Americans, and Muslim American youth, as continually oppressed victims can be just as much of a flattening stereotype as images of young Muslims as potential terrorists.” While we all know that some people assume that young Muslim Americans are potential ISIS recruits, many people also assume that young Muslim Americans are dealing primarily and almost constantly with anti-…
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…ggles. Of course, the category of “working class” has been used throughout American history to describe White people. In reality, the American working class is racially diverse, and includes many BIPOC people. The 2021 American Community Survey shows: “Black, Hispanic, and other workers of color make up 45 percent of the working class, while non-Hispanic white workers comprise the remaining 55 percent.” But, as we shall see, the song doesn’t seem…
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…cans who would be more fitting (and less problematic) to symbolize Italian-American contributions to American society than an individual who never actually set foot in what is now the United States? Whether it’s the school-age yarn about proving the world wasn’t flat, or the daring and brave explorer setting out to find an alternate route to Asia for spices, to the more complex and unsympathetic readings, Columbus as origin myth is a Rorschach tes…
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…Weyrich at the Free Congress Foundation had a vision for the future of the American right. They argued that American conservatives, having successfully mainstreamed a free-market consensus, should pivot to the terrain of social issues, and adopt a “cultural conservatism” centered on family, education, crime, and morality, in order to shape public discourse. Needing a new enemy to rally the public’s interest, Lind focused upon the Frankfurt School,…
Read More…he vote was celebrated by Catholic U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and other American officials. NY Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, sponsor of the state’s marriage equality legislation, wrote in a letter to the New York Times saying that even though he was a visible Irish American he had often felt that he didn’t belong. Irish people from all over the world returned home to vote in this election. I returned to the birthplace of my family to help in…
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…ican Values Survey was the increase in support for political violence. The number of Americans who agreed that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country” has jumped from 15% to 23% over the past two years. Today approximately one in three Republicans (33%) and White evangelical Protestants (31%) believe that political violence might be necessary to save the coun…
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