Biblical Literacy and Two Classical Sociologists

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-240
Author(s):  
David Chalcraft
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
American South ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Biblical Literacy ◽  
Black Folk ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Souls Of Black Folk ◽  
The American South

This article explores aspects of the biblical literacy of two classical sociologists, Max Weber (1864–1920) and William Dubois (1868–1963) and after discussing two examples in some depth and drawing comparisons, briefly reflects on what kinds of biblical literacy is required of contemporary readers of Weber and Dubois, if they are to make sense of their sociology given the continuing legacy of the Bible in their work. The examples of their use of biblical ideas, themes and figures are taken from Weber’s lectures, “Politics as a Vocation and Science as a Vocation,” and from Dubois’ The Souls of Black Folk. It is argued that whilst Weber uses biblical quotation to share with his audience a situation with some sociological analogy to their own case, Dubois utilises the continuing authority of the Bible amongst his White and Black audiences to affect social change and to provide an identity and purpose for Black folk post emancipation in the American South.

scholarly journals Gramsci and The South as a Space of Emancipation

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 39-55
Author(s):  
Antonio Fontana
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
American South ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
The South ◽  
Black Folk ◽  
Du Bois ◽  
Dialectical Tension ◽  
The American South ◽  
19Th And 20Th Century

The paper will actively engage with the contradictions found in Gramsci in an attempt to tease out the elements of emancipation found in his thought, as well as a sub-culture of opposition against Western notions of rationality. Antonio Gramsci’s analysis of the Italian South and of the Southern Italian peasantry in relation to the formation of a radical politics of emancipation constitutes one of the most salient features of his critique of orthodox Marxism. I argue that for the Italian Marxist theorist, the liberation of the Italian peasantry is not only a project of social, economic and political emancipation. Rather, the peasantry’s emancipation is also seen as a project of cultural liberation, a liberation from the dominant strands of rationalist and positivist Enlightenment thought, which Gramsci saw as encapsulated in Crocean philosophy. For Gramsci, the task of the organic intellectuals is to create an ideational sphere in which the colonized South can potentially articulate and celebrate a culture that has historically been deemed backward and primitive. However, Gramsci’s analyses of the South also contain historicist encrustations, which create a dialectical tension in his theory of politico-cultural emancipation that has never really been solved. I argue that the positivist and progressionist encrustations of Gramsci’s program for the emancipation of the South is an instantiation of a wider, Western, 19th and 20th century intellectual tradition which conflates “progress” as such with emancipation, a tradition that goes beyond the Italian and European context, and that is even paralleled by the model for black emancipation in the American South put forth by a figure as seemingly divergent as, say, W.E. B. Du Bois in the The Souls of Black Folk (1903).

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Locke
Keyword(s):  
American South ◽  
The Political ◽  
Bible Belt ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Southern Religion ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The American South ◽  
Major Argument

The introduction presents the book’s major argument that, through the politics of prohibition, ambitious evangelical leaders were able to inject themselves into southern life and create the political conditions that would later identify the American South as the Bible Belt. H. L. Mencken coined that term later, in the 1920s, to capture what he saw as the South’s peculiar alliance of region and religion, but the reality that Mencken described was only the closing chapter of a long historical process. To explore that process, the introduction establishes key concepts such as clericalism and anticlericalism, argues for Texas as the proper focus for a targeted study, and previews major characters and milestones in the development of a politicized brand of southern religion.

Making the Bible Belt

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Locke
Keyword(s):  
American South ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Religious Right ◽  
Religious Support ◽  
Bible Belt ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Face ◽  
The American South ◽  
Shared Commitment

By reconstructing the religious crusade to achieve prohibition in Texas, Making the Bible Belt reveals how southern religious leaders overcame long-standing anticlerical traditions and built a powerful political movement that injected religion irreversibly into public life. H.L. Mencken coined the term “Bible Belt” in the 1920s to capture the peculiar alliance of religion and public life in the American South, but the reality he described was only the closing chapter of a long historical process. Through the politics of prohibition, and in the face of bitter resistance, a complex but shared commitment to expanding the power and scope of religion transformed southern evangelicals’ inward-looking restraints into an aggressive, self-assertive, and unapologetic political activism. Early defeats forced prohibitionist clergy to recast their campaign as a broader effort that churned notions of history, race, gender, and religion into a moral crusade that elevated ambitious leaders such as the pugnacious fundamentalist J. Frank Norris and US senator Morris Sheppard, the “Father of National Prohibition,” into national figures. By exploring the controversies surrounding the religious support of prohibition in Texas, Making the Bible Belt reconstructs the purposeful, decades-long campaign to politicize southern religion, hints at the historical origins of the religious right, and explores a compelling and transformative moment in American history.

Biblical Literacy and the English King James Liberal Bible

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-211
Author(s):  
James Crossley
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Biblical Literacy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Arena ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Liberal Capitalism ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Popular Nationalism ◽  
King James Bible

Using the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible as a test case, this article illustrates some of the important ways in which the Bible is understood and consumed and how it has continued to survive in an age of neoliberalism and postmodernity. It is clear that instant recognition of the Bible-as-artefact, multiple repackaging and pithy biblical phrases, combined with a popular nationalism, provide distinctive strands of this understanding and survival. It is also clear that the KJV is seen as a key part of a proud English cultural heritage and tied in with traditions of democracy and tolerance, despite having next to nothing to do with either. Anything potentially problematic for Western liberal discourse (e.g. calling outsiders “dogs,” smashing babies heads against rocks, Hades-fire for the rich, killing heretics, using the Bible to convert and colonize, etc.) is effectively removed, or even encouraged to be removed, from such discussions of the KJV and the Bible in the public arena. In other words, this is a decaffeinated Bible that has been colonized by, and has adapted to, Western liberal capitalism.

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