Religion Dispatches
…ents in North Carolina, I offered a few thoughts on Twitter about just how American Islam is. Islam is as American as basketball. pic.twitter.com/O6IcSkxvy1 — peter manseau (@petermanseau) February 11, 2015 Islam is as American as dancing with dad at your wedding. pic.twitter.com/HZL7fRzWFC — peter manseau (@petermanseau) February 11, 2015 Islam is as American as pride and ambition. pic.twitter.com/ghycpAaTXo — peter manseau (@petermanseau) Februa…
Read More
…ed with skepticism. To depart from a solely Protestant conception of early American religious identity doesn’t require the discovery of crypto-Catholicism in Jamestown—interesting though it would be. Secondary education in the U.S. may still emphasize a Protestant triumphalist version of early American history focusing on the mythopoetic significance of Plymouth Rock and the pilgrims to the exclusion of others, but academics working across discipl…
Read More…performed religious and political speech. Just because one doesn’t sound like Mushmouth from Fat Albert or use the imaginary “jive” language from the movie Airplane does not mean that one is not informed by African American linguistic constructions. Maybe if Senator Reid embraced a little more “Negro dialect” like his president, he might not sound so “inartful” when describing the American electorate in the future….
Read More
…ening, the mainline denominations were most definitely still in control of American Christianity. Catholics were smaller in numbers and had a much weaker class position. The mainline churches had growing memberships, media connections, and they dominated all three branches of the federal government. In 1963, mainliners were proud to publish Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” in their house organ, The Christian Century, whil…
Read More
…s is a thorny task. But Khan recognized these complexities, insisting that American Islam should not be treated as a monolith. In her vision, the center will be less a final product, than a process—an ongoing effort to hold the “difficult conversations” that shape American faith. Thrust into the center of a heated debate, supporters of Park51 are coping by placing their efforts in historical context. Every major religion has moved through virulent…
Read More
…ome housing ruining neighborhoods. Taken together we can see that for many Americans, the “Great American Story” is necessarily bound up with whiteness, Christianity, state-sanctioned violence toward “unruly” minorities, and access to firearms to ensure self-protection. Americans who embrace Christian nationalism and want to see it privileged in the public sphere are much more fearful of the changing demographic and political landscape of the Unit…
Read More
…they “assimilate,” and they shouldn’t seek to “change” America, only to be Americans—or, rather, what Scott deems to be real Americans. This is along the same lines as the ethno-nationalist sense of “volk” that animates the latest ad for Peter Thiel-backed far-right candidate for US Senate in Arizona, Blake Masters. Both claim that there’s a narrow and fixed definition of who is and is not American—first and foremost, white, Christian people who l…
Read More
…cosystem. Intellectuals from right-wing journals like First Things and The American Conservative rub shoulders with journalists from outlets like American Greatness and The Epoch Times; policy analysts from think tanks like the Claremont Institute and the Heritage Foundation; and representatives from organizing outfits like American Moment and Young Republicans chapters. Conservative leaders of Protestant seminaries, Catholic theologians, and Orth…
Read More
…ississippi, Alabama, Georgia—all these Southeastern states that had Native American populations. In the early 1800s they began to be pushed off the land and then were forcibly pushed off the land [even more rapidly] under Andrew Jackson’s presidency. It was the largest forced migration in the continent’s history. Some 80,000 people were forced from their land, and maybe 20% of them died en route to what is now Oklahoma. So that cleansing happens r…
Read More
…l they might be to host an American billed by this source as a “well-known American psychologist” and a “leading American crusader against homosexuality”—and particularly since he said he had come “to thank the Russian people, the State Duma, and President Putin… in the name of the entire Christian world.” To thank them, that is, for their uncompromising stance against same-sex relations which, in Cameron’s fact-free worldview, are destroying West…
Read More