Religious Difference and the Monkey King of Oklahoma City
Posted: December 12, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Christianity, Hanuman, hegemony, Hinduism, monuments, Oklahoma, pluralism, Religion, religious difference, religoius difference, Satanists, tables, Ten Commandments 2 Comments »
Flickr user henrik_me / Creative Commons
In 2012 private funds paid to erect a Ten Commandments monument on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capitol. A 2009 state law allowing privately funded religious monuments on public grounds paved the way for the Ten Commandments to sit in granite outside the capitol. Seeing an opening in the new law and the new monument, earlier this month, a Satanist group from New York announced plans to build their own privately funded monument next to the Ten Commandments as “an homage to Satan.” The Satanists have only raised $2,700 of their $20,000 goal-though maybe a more modest homage could be designed. Then, this week, a group of Hindus led by the indefatigable Rajan Zed announced plans to build a monument of their own-the Hindu god Hanuman.
It’s important to notice the different reactions the Satanist and Hindu plans elicited from Oklahoma officials. On the Satanist monument:
“That’s Oklahoma’s house. It’s not the Satanic club of New York’s house,” said Capitol architect Duane Mass, who serves on the commission.
“I think it is a joke,” said Senate Pro Tem Brian Bingman, R-Sapulpa.
“This is a faith-based nation and a faith-based state,” said Rep. Earl Sears, R-Bartlesville. “I think it is very offensive they would contemplate or even have this kind of conversation.”
On the Hanuman monument:
Rep. Earl Sears, a Republican from Bartlesville, Okla., who called the Satanist monument offensive, was less inclined to speak directly about a Hindu monument.
“We have a system in place to process these requests,” Sears said. “I stand by my comments that we are a faith-based nation, and I know that once you open the door on this sort of thing that you can’t know where or how it will end up. We’ll just let the system work.”
Trait Thompson, chairman of the Oklahoma Capitol Preservation Commission, which approves all monuments, declined to comment, saying only that a good-faith application would be voted on by the commission.
Why don’t the Satanists get to take part in the system? On one level this is yet another example of how religion is a category up for grabs in American culture that is constantly being redefined. For the Oklahoma officials Satanism is not a religion or a faith, ergo it does not get to work through the system. Hinduism is a religion, a world religion no less, in their eyes and so it gets a chance.
But from another angle, this is also a matter of religious difference. Religion only exists when it is a term that encompasses a set of different things. It is a term that necessarily connotes variety and difference. What gets in or out of that term, what that term contains, is always up for grabs. But the term is always an attempt to cordon off a set of cultural somethings.
So note that the the 2009 bill that began this whole controversy makes no mention of religion. It is quite narrow and focused on one thing: the Ten Commandments have an important place in American morality and law. Only at the very end does the specter of religion and its tidal wave of difference and diversity loom.
The placement of this monument shall not be construed to mean that the State of Oklahoma favors any particular religion or denomination therof over others, but rather will be placed on the Capital grounds where there are numerous other monuments.
Smartly played. This monument is not going to open the flood gates for “particular religion,” the bill claims. It does take part in diversity, though; the diversity of monuments already on the capitol grounds. We’re adding a different monument to the monuments, not a different religion, the bill argues. In fact, this is what Rep. Mike Reynolds argued:
“Rep. Mike Reynolds, R-Oklahoma City, said the New York group is trying to place a monument on the Capitol grounds for religious purposes and will be unsuccessful. The Ten Commandments monument, on the other hand, was put up for historical purposes, Reynolds said.” It’s not about religion at all, but about history.
The Satanists, the Hindus, and the constitutional law professors disagree:
But Joseph Thai, a constitutional law professor at the University of Oklahoma, said the decision to place the Ten Commandments monument at the Capitol could put the state in a difficult position.
“The state can disown the Ten Commandments monument erected at the Capitol with private funds as private speech, but then it cannot reject other privately donated religious monuments — even a satanic one — on the basis of viewpoint,” Thai said.
Or the state could decide to exclude other religious monuments by taking ownership of the Ten Commandments monument as official state speech, but Thai said that could become legally problematic because of the sectarian message on the granite statute.
“The Legislature has put the state between a rock and a hard place, constitutionally speaking,” Thai said.
Either everyone gets a seat at the table or we do this to the table:
And so the table, or the Capitol, must make room for Satan and the Monkey King. Because as soon as religion gets to the Capitol, it brings diversity with it. It’s important to note that when folks are given a seat at the table good table manners are not always the norm. For example, the same Rajan Zed that is planning the Hanuman monument had this experience when delivering a prayer on the floor of the U.S. Senate:
(Side note: I discuss this episode a bit more in the conclusion of the book manuscript I’m currently working on.) The Senate prayer hecklers and the Ten Commandments monument builders assume that America is a Christian nation. What that means, I’m not sure exactly. But it is markedly different from the claim that America is a religious nation. The former is a claim that allows the Ten Commandments to exist as historical and not religious. It is a claim of religious hegemony. The latter claim anticipates religious difference and requires accommodation for it. The authors of that 2009 bill knew this and in marking the Ten Commandments as historical they avoided the religion question altogether. Subsumed under history, the monument maintained Christian cultural hegemony. Even if was misspelled. The question that emerges from this brouhaha in Oklahoma, then, is “all religions or no religions?” but “religion or Christian hegemony?”
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Should we compare American Atheism and American Christianity?: An Impromptu Twitter Discussion
Posted: August 1, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: atheism, Christianity, comparative religion, Evangelicalism, mainline, prosperity gospel, Religion, theory 1 Comment »The following conversation emerged on Twitter between myself and Per D. Smith, a Ph.D. candidate at Boston University. Check out Per’s great stuff over at irritually. Per specializes in studying irreligion and so I sent him a link to a CNN article and, well, click on the storify link and you can see what ensued.
[View the story "Atheism, Humanism, Prosperity Gospel, and the Mainline" on Storify]
The question I’m left with is this: Is there a force within American society/culture that is shaping atheists and Christians in similar ways such that evangelicals look like New Atheists and old school humanists look like the mainline? What could it be? How could we find it? Is it the market? Politics? What?
What do yall think?
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The Invention of American Evangelicalism; or, Why Ed Blum is Mad
Posted: June 25, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: American history, American Religion, american religious history, Christianity, Evangelicalism, Religion, Religion in American History 1 Comment »
This is the same dual work that much “evangelical history” does. On the one hand, the history of evangelicalism represents what evangelicalism is or has been to those not within the fold. It’s a project that says, “See, we have been at the heart of democracy and republicanism in America. Ours is the religion of freedom, liberty, choice, and reason.” It’s also a project that represents itself to itself-that is, to evangelicals. Often these representations are meant to call today’s evangelical Christians to be a better sort of Christians by reminding them of what they once were. “Once we had the social passion of the great abolitionists and the depth of thought of Edwards. We can have that again.” I think it is this dual work of representation that creates the blindspots around race and gender that engendered Ed’s battle cry and Kelly Baker’s questions.
That said, I don’t think the problem is really about representation. It’s not that there aren’t enough African American, Latino/a American, or Asian American evangelicals in our indexes and lists. The problem is not representation but construction. Or, to put it as a question, why do we think there even is such a thing as evangelicalism? Or evangelicals? To be blunt, why do we care who is or isn’t an evangelical?
The term “evangelical” has a long history that I won’t get into and that I’m sure many readers of this blog know more about than I do. However, it seems that the term has been self-applied or imposed upon a variety of Protestants since the Reformation. It is a “native term” batted about by Protestants throughout their various squabbles with themselves and others. For some American Protestants at certain places and times “evangelical” signified “true.” Evangelical Christianity stood in contrast to infidel Christianity (be it liberal or deistic or what have you). Or conversely, to put myself in the shoes of the Unitarians I’ve been reading all week, “evangelical” Christianity is stiff mindless orthodoxy that lacks the refined reason and liberty of liberal Christianity. The question of who is or isn’t “evangelical” or what is or isn’t “evangelicalism” is a Protestant debate between Protestants and has become a historiographical question within American religious history insofar as American religious history is still under-girded by Protestant sensibilities and categories.
The real question for historians of American religion and especially historians of American evangelicalism is “what are the politics of the category evangelical?” Why do we want more African Americans in a list of evangelicals? Why do we want more women? Because it is a privileged category. It is also a constructed category. It is, to use my favorite Jon Butler phrase, an interpretive fiction. It is an invention, first within the minds of Protestants since the Reformation and then within the minds of historians from Robert Baird to the guys at Patheos. Rather than worry about who is or isn’t an evangelical or adding more diversity to the list, historians should be investigating the process of this invention. We should be tracing the politics of the term and what is at stake in various places and times when people take, leave, fight for, argue about, or compromise over what it means to be “evangelical.” We don’t need more or different histories of evangelicalism or evangelicals, we need a genealogy of the term. We need to trace the invention of American evangelicalism. We need to stop assuming that evangelicalism is something out there for us to track down in the archive or research field and label correctly. Instead, let’s pay attention to how various subjects imagine evangelicalism and the political, cultural, and social forces at work in those imaginings. Let’s find out what’s at stake when people get included or excluded from “evangelicalism.” I’d do it but I have this other thing I’m working on.
Let me be clear, I don’t think evangelical historians should stop doing what they are doing. The work of representing evangelical history to outsiders and other evangelicals is important and I’m glad there are wise and talented folks doing it. However, the ways these historian construct “evangelicals” is ripe for analysis by those investigating how “evangelicals” are invented. In this way “evangelical history” can be the source material for a genealogy of evangelicalism. For folks like Ed who are unsatisfied with our current constructions of “evangelical,” adding a bunch of new names to the list or changing the category will not solve the problem. For a while “Puritan” stood as the privileged category of religious history. Perhaps we’re now realizing that it’s been replaced by “evangelical.” (A process that itself is worth investigation). We have to deconstruct these categories and dig up the processes that have bestowed their privilege upon them, whether by historical subjects or historians. We can’t just change the plaque on the spacecraft.
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Things that are still true about American Christianity…
Posted: April 6, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: American Religion, Christianity, Evangelicalism, fundamentalism, Jerry Falwell, Politics 2 Comments »
“The new formation [born-again Christianity] was part fundamentalist, part pentecostal, part charismatic, part evangelical, and then something else in a way that none of its parts had been: morally outraged, socially engaged, and routinely politically active.”
- Susan Friend Harding, The Book of Jerry Falwell (2000)
I was preparing my lesson for Monday’s class about the Scopes trial and Christian fundamentalism when I came across this quote from Harding. I assigned her chapter on Scopes to students in my (team taught) History of Religions in America course because it does a good job of situating the trial in the larger 20th century history of American Christianity and also emphasizes the fragmented nature of conservative Protestantism. This quote comes from the end of the chapter as she moves from the exile of the fundamentalists to the resurgence of born-agains in the 80s. What struck me, now a decade removed from Harding’s publication, is just how right she was. Since her book, we’ve heard the “end of the religious right” narrative trotted out again and again, but here we sit on the other side of Harding’s text, 9/11, two wars, and the Tea Party and it seems that moral outrage, social engagement, and political activism still define the Christian right. This three part recipe has roots in the evangelical reform movements of the nineteenth century and the revivalism of the early republic, but in the past thirty years it has mingled with late-modern capitalism, imperialism, free-marketism, and militarism. This Voltron of religious conservatism, call it Pentevangelamentalism (or born again Christianity, as Harding does), will always look like it’s about to fall apart at any moment. It is criss-cross with internal ruptures and lines of fissure. However, the shared outrage practiced in the social and political spheres will always hold it together in the end.
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REL100 Syllabus: Blogging, Tweeting, and Deconstructing Religion
Posted: August 23, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: academia, blogging, Christianity, Hinduism, REL100, syllabus, teaching, Twitter 2 Comments »I finally finished the syllabus for REL100. Good thing, too. The first day of class is tomorrow morning. It’s all filled up-40 students. Here goes nothin’!
REL 100: Introduction to Religion
Christian and Hindu Traditions
Michael J. Altman
@MichaelJAltman
Office Hours: Thursday 9am-noon, Callaway S220 (or by appt.)
http://blogs.emory.edu/rel100
I. Course Description
This course introduces the academic study of religion through a comparative approach to Hindu and Christian religious cultures. The central question of our course is “What is religion?” We will attempt to answer this question by drawing on a range of examples from Hindu and Christian religious cultures. These case studies will come from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in both India and America and range from Hindu pilgrimage to Catholic devotionalism to yoga to evangelicalism. These case studies will be organized around three themes: the body, ritual and devotion, and space and motion. In each case and through each theme we will pay special attention to the ways “religion” is constructed, authorized, and maintained. Turning to the ways religion was constructed in the past will shed light on the ways it is understood today. By the end of the course we will have an understanding of the rich variety of religious cultures found within Christianity and Hinduism while also gaining theoretical tools for analyzing various constructions of “religion” in public discourse and culture.
II. Course Outcomes
We will develop expertise in interpreting the plurality of religions (especially Christianity and Hinduism) in their historical settings.
We will critically assess the influence religions (again, especially Christianity and Hinduism) exert in shaping experience and society.
We will investigate the diverse of ways of “being in the world” in Christian and Hindu traditions.
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Superman and the American Christian Nation
Posted: May 4, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: American Religion, Christianity, Mike Huckabee, national culture, nationalism, schoolbooks, Superman Leave a comment »
Superman is renouncing his U.S. citizenship and Mike Huckabee is none too happy about it.
Huckabee, responding to the comic book flap Sunday on Fox News, called it “disturbing” that the larger than life superhero would give up his citizenship.
“Well it is a comic book, but, you know it’s disturbing that Superman who has always been an American icon is now saying I’m not going to be a citizen,” he said. “I think it’s a part of a bigger trend of Americans almost apologizing for being Americans.”
Huckabee said he wouldn’t purchase the comic book, and that American kids should be taught that their country is great.
“I’m disturbed by this whole globalist trend. I think we ought to be teaching young Americans that they’re young Americans, that it means something to be an American,” he said. “There’s something great about this country.”
I’m not a comic book reader or fan, nor am I a scholar of comic culture, but, if we take comic books as pedagogical at some level then it’s interesting to think of the shift Superman’s newfound internationalism symbolizes. I’ve been working with 19th century schoolbooks lately and thinking about the ways these books constructed “the American” for readers. I was especially interested in geography books because of the ways the located a white/Protestant/Enlightened/moral American nation in a world full of lesser nations and people. (For more on these schoolbooks and there representations see this paper from the 2010 AAR meeting.) In these books the American was always superior to the foreign. But now, in the 21st century, Superman is offering a new view of the globe.
“I intend to speak before the United Nations tomorrow and inform them that I am renouncing my U.S. citizenship,” Superman says in a comic book released last week. “I’m tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy. ‘Truth, justice and the American way’ — it’s not enough anymore.”
The 19th century schoolbooks I’ve examined stressed the moral superiority of America. Superman is questioning this moral superiority and that’s what bothers Mike Huckabee so much. Furthermore, 19th century books connected American moral superiority to its Christianity. Children were taught that Protestantism was the basis for American freedom; for ‘truth, justice, and the American way.’ For folks like Huckabee, who believe that America was founded as a “Christian nation” (whatever that means), Superman’s repudiation (or maybe it’s a refudiation?) signals a shift in our national pedagogy. The “globalist trend” Huckabee decries questions the morality of a specifically American form of Christianity that is grafted into American nationalism. The nationalist message of a white/Protestant/Enlightened/morally superior/civlized America gives way to a global message of tolerance, diplomacy, and international justice. The American way just isn’t enough any more. Superman is not a tool of American policy. He now stands for global truth and international justice.
Now, I only wonder if Superman was dancing in the streets Sunday night.
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Not Theology, but Authority: Rob Bell and the Evangelical Institutional Establishment
Posted: March 30, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: American Religion, Christianity, Evangelicalism, John Piper, Politics, power, Religion, Rob Bell, State of Formation 2 Comments »Note: Originally posted at State of Formation
The criticism of Rob Bell’s Love Wins is not about theology. It is all about authority.
In case you missed the hubbub surrounding Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins, I point you to Sara Staely’s post where she outlines John Piper and the neo-Calvinist establishment’s response to the book. She sums up the conflict nicely:
Over the past few days, one three-word tweet has put the evangelical world into a tizzy:Farewell Rob Bell. The tweet came from John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, MN and the veritable Godfather of the neo-reformed evangelical establishment (for more on Piper’s influence, see my previous post on evangelicals and inter-religious dialogue). Piper was referencing Pastor Rob Bell of Mars Hill Church in Grandville, MI, a celebrated speaker and author among a younger, more progressive evangelical crowd.
Largely based on this two-and-a-half minute promotional video for Bell’s forthcoming book,Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, Piper has determined that the book will come a bit too close to universalism for his sensibilities. And so, with a few clicks of the keyboard, a tap of the mouse and one trite tweet, it seems Bell has been expelled from what Piper deems to be the One True Church.
Sara goes on to discuss her own response to Piper et al.’s theological self-congratulations for securing orthodox evangelicalism, but I want to take things in a different direction. Sara is quite right to dwell on the theological implications of the “Bell’s Hell” controversy, however, I think at bottom the dispute is not about heaven and hell or heresy and orthodoxy. It is about authority.
Rob Bell challenges the authority of the (Calvinist) evangelical establishment and they don’t like it. For example, Bill Walker has compared Bell’s ideas in Love Wins with conservative evangelical darling and Presbyterian Church in America pastor Tim Keller’s ideas in The Reason for God. As Walker lays it out, the two share a lot in common. They both lean heavily on C.S. Lewis for their ideas and Bell even cites Keller’s other book Prodigal God in his “further reading” section of Love Wins. Yet, Keller is beloved by those in the pews and quoted by those in the pulpits while Bell is dangerous. As Walker puts it:
So here’s my second question. Why is the evangelical right threatened by Bell if his theology is the same as one of their own (Keller)? Is it because Keller’s allegiances prevent him from being scrutinized? Or, is this not even really about theology? Might there a deeper political element of power underlying the supposedly righteous rhetoric?
The short answer to Walker’s questions: Yes.
The controversy is not about the book or its theology. Look at this list of responses to the book from Southern Baptist leaders, put together by the Baptist Press. It seems like half of the respondents have not even read the book. They just know it was written by Rob Bell and so it must be opposed. The ones that do try to engage Bell’s writing either misread it or pan it as erroneous without giving good reasons why.
So, if it is not about theology, then what is is about? Why is Keller in but Rob Bell out? Why are old man Piper and the good fellas at the SBC hassling pastor Bell? Piper, the SBC, and other “orthodox” evangelical critics of the book are defending their own privileged place in American evangelicalism. Tim Keller is okay because he is a PCA pastor. He is inside the establishment. He is safe. Rob Bell is not. Bell is not part of any major denomination and so, to Piper et al., he answers to no one. He is a rogue pastor with a HarperCollins book deal.
The response to Bell reminds me of the disputes between the Old Lights and New Lights in colonial America. During what some historians call the Great Awakening, pastors like George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards preached an evangelicalism that emphasized God’s grace and personal experiences of salvation. Revivals broke out up and down the East coast as Whitfield preached to crowds. Along with this exuberant evangelical “experimental religion” came challenges to the old guard of church leadership. The revival came because of a new kind of ministry the mended the failures of the old lights.
While Bell is not giving sermons on “The Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry” like Gilbert Tennent, nonetheless, his book and his overall project challenges the power of the existing denominational establishment in America. The Baptists, the PCA, and the various Wesleyan and Pentecostal denominations have provided the institutional structures and the doctrinal orthodoxy for their particular corners of the evangelical community. But Bell and others like him come from outside of these structures, challenging their theology but, more importantly, challenging their authority. There is no assembly, council, bishop or court to drag Bell into and strip him of his post. This lack of control scares evangelical elites like John Piper.
In the pursuit for control over what counts as “evangelicalism” in America, it remains to be seen if love wins or not.
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Less Than Half of Evangelicals Are Tea Partying
Posted: February 24, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: American Religion, Christianity, Evangelicalism, religious right, tea party 3 Comments »The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has a new analysis of religion and the Tea Party. The whole thing is an interesting read and offers solid evidence for the religious forces driving the movement. Sara Posner and Mark Silk have offered their takes on the findings.
One thing jumped out to me:
Surveys from November 2010 through February 2011 show that white evangelical Protestants are roughly five times as likely to agree with the movement as to disagree with it (44% vs. 8%), though substantial numbers of white evangelicals either have no opinion or have not heard of the movement (48%).
If my math is right, less than half of evangelicals agree with the Tea Party and the rest either don’t care or actively disagree. This is important because while Pew has ample evidence to prove that most Tea Partiers are also part of the religious right (read conservative evangelicals), the majority of evangelicals are not affiliated with the Tea Party. So, Tea Party rhetoric, Tea Party leadership, and Tea Party activists must always be contextualized as a (sizable) minority within American evangelicalism.
When we hear Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, or Michele Bachmann invoking their evangelical street cred we have to remember that half of the folks in churches on Sunday morning don’t care about, don’t know, or don’t like them.
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Methodists and India: Mapping, Contact, and Travel in the Christian Advocate, 1860-1890
Posted: January 12, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 19th century, academia, American history, American Religion, American Society of Church History, Christianity, conference paper, Conference Papers, contact, gender, India, mapping, Methodism, Missions, Religion, travel 2 Comments »As I posted last week, this weekend I presented a paper on the topic of Methodist Media to the American Society of Church History at this year’s American Historical Association meeting. Below is my paper from the panel.
Methodists and India: Mapping, Contact and Travel in the Christian Advocate, 1860-1890
Michael J. Altman, Emory University
What could bourgeois Methodist readers have known about India and how could missionary work abroad have brought them this knowledge? Today, I will begin to answer these two questions through an analysis of The Christian Advocate in the late nineteenth century. The Christian Advocate, published in New York and the official weekly publication of the Methodist Episcopal Church, rose to a circulation of 63 to 70 thousand by 1879 and as one historian claims, “the paper became an icon of bourgeois America.”[i] The Advocate circulated among a growing middle class during the rise of the popular press in America and, therefore, the representations of India and Hinduism contained in its pages sparked the minds of a broad Evangelical readership.
I focus on three themes in the pages of the Advocate regarding India and Hinduism: mapping, contact, and travel. First, missionary reports mapped out India as a geographic and spiritual field for missions work. Second, women in America were especially recruited to join in the missionary effort and make spiritual and imaginary contact with Hindu women in India. Finally, in order to see the fruits of the Methodist mission work in India, writers sent letters and stories of conversions, conferences, and revivals that allowed American Methodists to travel to India and see the Holy Spirit at work. In all three cases, imagination brought India into American homes through the pages of the Advocate.
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Things Sacred & Profane: Sacred Constitution, Jerry Brown, Mormon politics, and an atheist Bible reader
Posted: January 5, 2011 Filed under: Things Sacred and Profane | Tags: atheism, Bible, Christianity, Constitution, Dead Kennedys, Evangelicals, Founders, Harry Reid, Jerry Brown, Jesuits, King James Bible, Mit Romney, Mormonism, Mother Theresa, Politics, sexuality, Zen Leave a comment »The recitation of the Constitution in the House renews the debate over Founders’ intentions.
Peter Berger on “Conservative Christians and the Sexual Revolution”
Romney and Reid: Does Mormonism matter in politics?
An atheist who is spending a year reading through the King James Bible.
California’s new (but not completely new) governor, Jerry Brown, trained with Jesuits, studied with Zen Masters, and hung out on the streets with Mother Theresa. He also inspired this great Dead Kennedy’s song.
