Religion Dispatches
…mself put it, an understandable sense of suspicion and distrust that black Americans, particularly black Americans of Wright’s generation, hold toward the nation. But Wright does not offer a jeremiad. His words evoke not King’s dream, but a rather different set of religious voices from American history that have denied the nation’s fundamental promise. William Lloyd Garrison called the nation “diseased beyond the power of recovery,” and famously b…
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…zations and Community Centers, became safe havens through which distinctly American Catholic and American Jewish communities and identities were formed. In recent years, an American Muslim identity is also emerging from the long history of Muslim community building in the United States. This story dates back to the European discovery of the Americas. We often forget that Europeans crossed the Atlantic in search of trade routes that would bypass Mu…
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…desired collective salvation. On January 6, 2021, it probably seemed to a number of participants and supporters in the Euro-American Nativist Millennial Movement that they had finally achieved the critical mass of adherents to overthrow Congress. There are many varieties of millennialism. As I wrote in The Oxford Handbook of Millennialism: “A nativist millennial movement consists of people who feel under attack by a foreign colonizing government…
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…n, in some cases public policy. The book makes the case that a significant number of Americans believe in the same Devil believed in by Puritan preachers and 19th-century evangelists. This cannot be dismissed. Its essential to understand why this is so, what historical conditions gave rise to this phenomenon and what does it tell us about the United States. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? I had several groups in mind, all of…
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…zona. When the police arrested the shooter, he said: “I’m a patriot and an American. I’m American. I’m a damn American.” Muslim girl power The fictional war between America and “Muslims” (including actual Muslims, those who “look like” Muslims, and those who live close to Muslims, like Iraqi Christians) is perpetuated and extended by the uncritical visuality of the news media. While I believe the war is based on fictional understandings of “Muslim…
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…als than symbolic statements articulating the historic prejudices of great numbers of Americans, who feared immigrants generally, and he decline of white American nationalism particularly.” And voila! Ten months later, and the primary enabler, publisher, and purveyor of those fears, Stephen Bannon, sits aside the President-Elect, while fake news outlets, white supremacist sites, and messengers of a populist ethno-nationalism have ascended to a cen…
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…d. And in response to the controversy and the barrage of outraged parental phone calls, many school systems decided it was safest not to air the speech at all. Others required that alternative activities be arranged for children whose parents refused to permit their kids to be subjected to an encouraging presidential pep talk. The evening after the talk, the local news station I was watching aired a report on the event, complete with footage of a…
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…ential material,” said Mpofu. “Oh yeah,” echoes Bourland. “In my heart, I just begin to pray, God, let this woman rise to this place that you want her to go,” said Mpofu. “Number one, she’s a Christian. Number two, she’s a woman.” Watch a short video montage of the conference here. —Ed….
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I have had the honor of working extensively with the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, beginning when he keynoted the launch of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice in November 2013. It has been a fruitful partnership in all respects. In his new book, Rev. Barber reminds us of the importance of education and history in the long struggle for justice and righteousness. Referring to how those in power kept the poor divided in histor…
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…tion of New Orleans not decreased by almost 30 percent (a majority African American), there would be no Beasts of the Southern Wild. Also, by coincidence, the BP Deepwater Horizon oil blowout occurred on the first day of shooting the film in April of 2010. As Zeitlin puts it, “The oil spill happening created this sort of strange, life imitates art on set… The whole time you would wake up in the morning and check the oil and it would get closer and…
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