Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brett Hendrickson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious History ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
History Of

The book concludes by revisiting the metaphor of religious ownership and how it has been brought to bear on the history of the Santuario; the chapter also provides suggestions as to how this metaphor could be fruitfully applied to other contexts. The conclusion then turns to why the Santuario’s history is so important. First, as Catholics continue to be the largest denomination in the United States, it is essential that we better understand this largest of all Catholic pilgrimage sites in the United States. Second, as Hispanics grow in importance as the nation’s largest minority group, it becomes more and more important that we understand their history and religious heritage. The history of the Santuario de Chimayó is an essential part of American religious history.

Buddhism and Race

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeana McNicholl
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious History ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
Buddhist Studies ◽  
Race And Racialization ◽  
History Of ◽  
Race Ethnicity

This chapter takes a step toward the theorization of discourses of race and racialization within the American Buddhist context. Far from being neutral observers, Buddhist Studies scholars have participated in the racialization of particular American Buddhisms. After mapping the landscape of key works on race, ethnicity, and American Buddhism, this chapter takes as a case study a collection of black Buddhist publications that reflect on race and ethnicity. Thus far, scholarship has ignored black Buddhists, yet black Buddhist reflections on race challenge dominant paradigms for the interpretation of the history of Buddhism and Buddhist teachings in the United States. This chapter concludes with suggestions for future avenues for research, including ways that we may connect the work of black Buddhists to the wider context of American religious history and American engagements with Asia.

Is There a Center to American Religious History?

2002 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 380-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Vance Trollinger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious History ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
Martin Marty

Over the past few years I have been dealing with a narrow version of this question, as it has applied to the history of Protestantism in the twentieth century. In our book, Re-Forming the Center: American Protestantism, 1900 to the Present, Douglas Jacobsen and I argued that the two-party model of Protestantism in the United States—conservative vs. liberal, fundamentalist vs. modernist, and so on—does not take into account the remarkable complexity and diversity of the Protestant religious experience in America, and in some sense presents distorted picture of that reality. There were scholars—including Martin Marty, who generously contributed a dissenting essay to our volume—who felt that we had overstated our brief against the two-party paradigm. More relevant for our purposes this evening, there were a number of reviewers who agreed with our critique of the two-party paradigm, but who also expressed disappointment that we provided only the barest outlines of a new or better metaphor or model to explain twentieth-century American Protestantism. While I had not gone into this project thinking that we would end the day with a new interpretive paradigm, I certainly was not surprised by this critique. The very first time I gave a paper on some of our preliminary findings, there was a scholar of U.S. religious history in the audience who squirmed throughout the entirety of my remarks; when I finished, before I had the chance to ask for questions, she blurted out: “I find your argument pretty convincing, but if you can't give me a new model to replace the old one, how am I supposed to teach my course on the history of American Protestantism?” Well, we broaden the topic from Protestantism in the United States to religion in the United States, it would seem that, in many ways, this is the issue we are addressing this evening.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Altman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
William James ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Comparative Religion ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
History Of

The epilogue examines what the genealogy of “heathen,” “Hindoo,” and “Hindu” means for the study of American religious history and religious studies. It argues that the various projects of comparative religion that included representations of heathens, Hindoos, and Hindus must be incorporated into the larger history of religious studies. As the previous chapters have shown, definitions of heathen, Hindoo, Hindu, and Hinduism emerged from American debates about the category “religion.” The epilogue gestures toward a history that would locate religious studies within the history of religion in the United States and cites William James as a possible starting point for such a history.

Jehovah's Witnesses as Un-Americans? Scriptural Injunctions, Civil Liberties, and Patriotism

2013 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 1081-1108 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZOE KNOX
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Amendment ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious History ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
Jehovah’S Witnesses ◽  
Jehovah's Witnesses ◽  
Corporate Body

In the United States, the steadfast refusal of the Jehovah's Witnesses to perform some of the most basic rituals of citizenship has led champions of Americanism to cast them as unpatriotic and even seditious. The Watch Tower Society, the corporate body of the Witnesses, has responded to these accusations by presenting Witnesses as upstanding citizens, only ever departing from the letter of the law when there is a conflict between secular legal directive and scriptural injunction. This essay argues that the gulf between the popular perception of the Witnesses as poor citizens, particularly during the middle decades of the twentieth century, and the society's own representation of its members as assets to their communities highlights the contested and mutable nature of the label un-American. Furthermore, it argues that there is a paradox in the place of the Jehovah's Witnesses in modern American history: though operating beyond the pale of understood norms of citizenship, they have been fundamental to shaping the First Amendment freedoms enjoyed by all citizens. It seeks to contribute to two largely unwritten histories, namely the place of the Witnesses in American religious history, and the ever-changing yet resolutely politicized concept of the un-American.

Devotions and Desires

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African American ◽  
Birth Control ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Aids Epidemic ◽  
History Of ◽  
Zero Sum

At a moment when “freedom of religion” rhetoric fuels public debate, it is easy to assume that sex and religion have faced each other in pitched battle throughout modern U.S. history. Yet, by tracking the nation’s changing religious and sexual landscapes over the twentieth century, this book challenges that zero-sum account of sexuality locked in a struggle with religion. It shows that religion played a central role in the history of sexuality in the United States, shaping sexual politics, communities, and identities. At the same time, sexuality has left lipstick traces on American religious history. From polyamory to pornography, from birth control to the AIDS epidemic, this book follows religious faiths and practices across a range of sacred spaces: rabbinical seminaries, African American missions, Catholic schools, pagan communes, the YWCA, and much more. What emerges is the shared story of religion and sexuality and how both became wedded to American culture and politics. The volume, framed by a provocative introduction by Gillian Frank, Bethany Moreton, and Heather R. White and a compelling afterword by John D’Emilio, features essays by Rebecca T. Alpert and Jacob J. Staub, Rebecca L. Davis, Lynne Gerber, Andrea R. Jain, Kathi Kern, Rachel Kranson, James P. McCartin, Samira K. Mehta, Daniel Rivers, Whitney Strub, Aiko Takeuchi-Demirci, Judith Weisenfeld, and Neil J. Young.

scholarly journals A Sketch of the Religious History of the Negroes in the South

1914 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 175-204
Author(s):  
Richard Clark Reed
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
The South ◽  
Moral Attitude ◽  
Official Record ◽  
History Of ◽  
Slave Population

“A Bout the last of August came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty negars.” Thus reads the ancient official record which chronicles in those few words one of the most fateful events that has found place in the annals of our country, the introduction of African slavery. The year was 1619, and the place was the little colony of Jamestown, then in the thirteenth year of its existence. The institution at once took root downward and bore fruit upward. The trade rapidly grew and the market enlarged despite many earnest protests, until throughout the thirteen colonies ready sale was found for all the slaves that were offered. The traffic continued for one hundred and eighty-nine years, and when it was finally suppressed in 1808, there was a slave population in the United States numbering considerably over one million. From the first the most popular market was in the South, and ultimately the institution became localized in that section. This was not because of difference of mental and moral attitude in the two sections, but because of different climatic and economic conditions.

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