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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…

American Nuns Under the Vatican Microscope

By Mary E. Hunt

…civil disobedience and goes to jail to help stop war or nuclear weapons. A number of the questions are clearly designed to elicit answers the Vatican knows full well it won’t like. The data will provide the pretext for concluding that the decline in numbers in progressive groups is a result of their lack of obedience and conformity to the men’s rules. Solution: tighten up the ranks. Enter the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, the alte…

The American Media’s Longterm Ambivalence About the Papacy

By Peter Manseau

…ders hoping to gain insight into what it actually might mean to live as an American Catholic who was not a member of the clergy were better served elsewhere. Through much of its history, Time’s blind spot to certain kinds of Catholic stories was compensated by its sister publication, which came to being at the suggestion of Clare Boothe Luce. Perhaps one of the most influential Catholic converts in American history, she had learned the faith at th…

Don’t Call It “Prayer Shaming”: Our Moral Failure Exposed

By Willie Dwayne Francois

…2,223 people have been killed in gun-related incidents in the U.S. and the number of people fatally shot by American police officers approaches 1,000. Pointing out a national moral failure and theological treason is not “prayer shaming.” We must raise our voices in the key of hope until Capitol Hill sees what we see: preventable social and personal pain caused by guns. I am reminded that as Jesus prepared his disciples for his death (a state-spons…

Obama’s Supposed “Religion Dilemma” and American Exceptionalism

By Sarah Posner

…versus-them package: that Obama doesn’t understand the divine roots of the American founding, probably because he’s not really a Christian and not really an American, and only by electing the likes of Michele Bachmann or Jim DeMint can we ensure that the Christian nation ship can be righted again. By framing the confrontation of this narrative as an “uphill battle,” Democrats make the enormous and unnecessary mistake of placing themselves in the p…

New History Finally Recognizes Afro-Creole Spiritualists

By Paul Harvey

…to the popular audience. A recent Harris poll reported that 42 percent of Americans believe in ghosts. Whether one believes in ghosts or not, Americans are fascinated by them. A century and a half before the popularity of ghost-hunter shows on the SyFy Network and NBC’s award-winning show “Medium,” belief in spirit communication was serious and widespread in the United States. New Orleans in particular is known for ghosts and spirits, and this bo…

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’…

What’s in a Name? Religious Nones and the American Religious Landscape

By Richard Flory

…tention is that there has been a significant and sustained increase in the number of people who are choosing not to identify with any religion. As reported by the Pew Research Center, in 2007, 16 percent of American adults reported no religious preference or affiliation; by 2014 this statistic had increased to almost 23 percent. And younger adults are more likely to say that they have no religion than their parents or grandparents’ generations. Ma…

New Study: Three-Quarters of American Giving Goes to Religion

By Jay Michaelson

…ich is what religions do, brilliantly. As between different religions, the numbers are fairly consistent—except for American Jews, who give more to secular causes than anyone else. Coming in the wake of the recent Pew Survey on American Jewish Life, these findings may shed new light on Jewish secularism, a trend which has greatly worried the Jewish establishment. Maybe the secular social-justice commitments of American Jews are a sign of Judaism’s…

America, the Mythical: “Mother of Exiles” or Denier of Safe Haven?

By Ed Simon

…c story of America’s foundation. The conservative reads a tale about Anglo-American Protestant hegemony and the opening up of North American resources. But the radical, perhaps even the mystical interpreter, reads a more allegorically profound story about America as “Mother of Exiles,” a universal space that encompases all ethnicities, cultures, and religions precisely because of its universality. Arguments about the significance of the pilgrims b…