Religion Dispatches
…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…e second being their distaste for President Trump. Seventy-five percent of American Jews disapprove of how Trump is doing his job, compared to 54 percent of Americans at large. (Incidentally, as a pollster on the conference call noted, Jared Kushner earned a 12 percent approval rate, which makes you wonder what 12 percent of American Jews are smoking.) The strong disapproval of Trump and his proxies is likely due to the president’s connections to…
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…d even went so far as to mansplain Catholic social teaching to a nun. Many American Catholics can’t forget either that American Catholic orders of religious investigated for “radical feminist themes” just a few years ago were all women’s orders, nor can we forget that the most prominent American theologians censured by the Vatican have also been women. Yes, those investigations took place under the previous pope, but the root causes behind them—a…
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…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…
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…s, while Juneteenth needs to be a “safe space”? White ethnic festivals and American civil holidays allow for an unconscious honorary ethnic status. It’s possible to see a young Asian American person in a “Kiss Me I’m Irish” t-shirt at a St. Patrick’s Day parade but not at a Juneteenth festival in one that says “Free-ish since 1865.” Again, the issues of race and slavery prevent this level of ethno-racial cosplay that we so frequently witness aroun…
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…her because we couldn’t bear to hear it, or because it became meaningless. Numbers are the entry point to the banality of death. An American Pickle is a film about two people, who are really one person (Seth Rogen plays both roles), the hapless Herschel Greenbaum and his great-grandson Ben Greenbaum, a web and app designer who lives in hipster Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Herschel gets pickled in Brooklyn in 1919 and wakes in 2019, where he meets his g…
Read More…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…
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…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…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….
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…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…
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