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
…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…
Read More
…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…
Read More
…e connections and overlaps between homosexuality and fatness and eating in American culture. There’s an article to be written on American moral crusaders who wrote about both issues. Peter Wyden, an executive editor of Ladies’ Home Journal, wrote popular books on each, and there are others. I wasn’t able to include much on fatness, weight loss, and social class—an issue that interests me a great deal and that I’ve written about elsewhere. What’s t…
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…
Read More
…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
…percent of the total Russian population in 2021—according to the official numbers. When read against the dwindling numbers of some of Russia’s largest ethnic minority groups, such as Tatars, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Avars, Armenians, and Ukrainians, this data suggests that many Russian citizens do not feel safe enough to disclose their ethnic identity in the current political climate defined by the Russification of the nation. See Robert Coalson, “Russ…
Read More…ported a conscience vote on the issue. Uganda: Pride supported by US while American evangelicals promote homophobia U.S. embassy officials took part in Pride activities in Kampala last week and last weekend, reports the Washington Blade’s Michael Lavers. Activist Richard Lusimbo praised the Obama administration’s “very beneficial” diplomatic efforts promoting LGBT human rights and slammed American evangelicals who continue to promote anti-gay atti…
Read More
…and the world forces us all to make faith decisions. In fact, there are a number of issues—evolution, Bible criticism, climate change, sex education, even supply-side economic policy—where conservative Christians have embraced the postmodern uncertainty undercutting consensus expert knowledge. In If God Meant to Interfere I try to show how postmodern literature couldn’t really face down the Christian Right, since it was already entangled with wha…
Read More
…ters especially in southern states is a phenomenon suggesting the power of American Christianity to shape American electoral patterns. Black religious lives matter when the votes are tallied. ______________________________ Who is the “We”? Yolanda Pierce Professor of African American literature and religion at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of Hell Without Fires: Slavery, Christianity & the African American Spiritual Narrative The frenz…
Read More