Search Results

Here this chapter engages the work of Albert Raboteau, the elder statesman of contemporary African American religious history, particularly his early work, Slave Religion (1978). The ambiguity of this text, which is emblematic of the field, lies in its impression that black religion generally and Afro‐Christianity particularly is a reflex of race, an (essentialist) echo of “Africanity” or “blackness” itself. Thus, black cultural nationalism is at the root of black religion. However, such a reading of black faith only lodges it within, rather than seeing it as trying to disrupt, modernity's racial imagination.The chapter then reexamine Raboteau's early work in light of his post‐Slave Religion work, inspired as it is by icon theology. Raboteau can now historically call attention to how Afro‐Christianity disrupts the racial gaze. The book later refines and presses Raboteau's fledgling and sketchy insights in a theologically robust direction.

This chapter discusses the text, Tribal Talk. Topics covered include Black theology, the use of broken English in the narrative, hermeneutics, African-derived religions in the Americas, and African-American religious history.

The changes that took place in American religious life during the late twentieth century were, in some important respects, unprecedented. As the U.S. became hospitable to virtually all the religions of the world, more religious switching and experimenting occurred than ever before. In other respects, the enthusiasm for spirituality in this period was similar to previous Great Awakenings that have marked American religious history in the past. This concluding chapter compares the transformation of American religion in the late twentieth century to previous awakenings, suggesting that the impetus to spiritual expansion can be traced back through the American Transcendentalists to the New England Puritans and their influential role in shaping American culture.

The introduction discusses how the religious approach to intelligence was entwined with the study of “world religions” in the nation’s universities as well as a renewed focus on religious pluralism in the broader culture. By the 1950s, American popular attitudes toward the world’s religions increasingly assumed that all religions (simply by virtue of being “religions”) were functionally similar. This echoed the “world religions paradigm” (WRP) then becoming prominent in the academy. The WRP understood global religious systems as roughly analogous to one another and interchangeable in terms of function and purpose, on account of sharing a common essence. This idea appealed to intelligence officers in part because it suggested that religious meaning was universally translatable across otherwise stark divides of language, culture, and ethnicity. In incorporating this idea into their work, American intelligence officers took their belief systems and certainties local to the United States and projected them outward around the globe.

This chapter explores the relationship between religious conservatism and fundamentalism in America. Fundamentalism is one of the most important and one of the most difficult topics in American religious history. Fundamentalists are defined as “people of the Book”; that is, they uphold a divinely inspired Scripture as the final authority in every matter. This chapter begins with an overview of the history of American fundamentalism and of the other conservative religious groups and proceeds by discussing five “fundamentals” deemed to be the core doctrines of orthodox Christianity: the inerrancy of scripture; the virgin birth of Christ; the “substitution theory” of the atonement, a particular understanding of Christ's death as a satisfaction for human sin; the physical resurrection of Christ; and the authenticity of the miracles reported in the Bible. It then charts the rise of fundamentalist militancy and considers the Fundamentalism Project and concludes by analyzing fundamentalism in relation to Calvinism and gender theory.

This chapter uses quantitative data to show how many white Christian nationalists there are, which religious traditions they belong to, and what they believe. WCN is most strongly represented among evangelical Protestants but attracts significant numbers of mainline Protestants, Roman Catholics, and even some non-Christians. It also shows that white Americans who embrace Christian nationalism have very different views than non-whites who do so, and on a wide range of issues including America’s religious history, racial discrimination, and economic issues. This is why it is important to focus on white Christian nationalism, rather than just “Christian nationalism,” or “white Christianity.” Last, the chapter shows how WCN influences Americans’ interpretations and responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and their embrace of libertarian, free-market economics.

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.

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.

This introductory chapter depicts a foreign landscape where its inhabitants understood the Christian faith and its implications quite differently from the meanings given by contemporary believers. It re-creates white Americans' dialogue about the implications of faith for racial justice. Drawing significantly on insights from American religious history, the book takes the experiences of religious individuals, leaders, congregations, and faith communities as the basis of the narrative. In addition, various misconceptions about the civil rights struggle result from framing it primarily as a story about progressive egalitarians versus unenlightened racists. More effectively than individuals with an inexplicable hatred of black folks, whites cooperated together to create obstacles to black advancement. The book aims to pinpoint the moral dimensions of this story where they properly belong.

This concluding chapter extends the narrative to the Civil War. In the 1840s and 1850s, a number of larger developments in American religious and intellectual history suggested that a new unity could be created in New York, whether it lay in evangelical revivalism, Broad Church Episcopalianism, or generalized Romanticism. But the reality of how church members lived highlighted major differences with the colonial era's promotion of organic unity, in particular the significance of place within the sphere of religious life. All four churches occupied space in Lower Manhattan, a site of increased commercialism and waning residence even at the turn of the nineteenth century. However, not all have remained in the same place, highlighting the challenges of urban worship even for the most resourceful and energetic congregations.

American evangelicals facing West from abroad have reshaped important elements of their religious tradition. Migration and demographic realignments intensified the impact on issues as varied as humanitarian work, civil rights, missiological strategies, sexuality, supernatural practices, and immigration. There were, however, limits to this global reflex. Transnational encounters often did not fit American categories. They did not cleanly map onto conservative or progressive sectors, and their influence often was limited to establishment evangelicals. Populists, many of whom voted for Donald Trump in 2016, have resisted the global reflex. This book, while narrating important demographic shifts, shows that evangelical cosmopolitanism is not pervasive at present.

This chapter narrates the various representations of religion in India that occurred at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions. Protestant speakers deployed many of the same representations found earlier in the century. Some described India as a land of heathenism while others found admirable qualities in Hindu religion. However, for the first time, Indian representatives were able to represent themselves. Most famously, Swami Vivekananda offered a lecture titled “Hinduism” that introduced Americans to Hinduism as a world religion. Yet, the Parliament stands as a conflicted and multivocal event where Protestants and Hindus disagreed over the true meaning of Hinduism and Hindu religion.