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The Future of the Religious Right

Robert Wuthnow

in Christianity in the Twenty-First Century: Reflections on the Challenges Ahead

This chapter examines the so-called New Christian Right and what role it may play in American society in the early decades of the 21st century. It is necessary to look back over the conditions that ... More

This chapter examines the so-called New Christian Right and what role it may play in American society in the early decades of the 21st century. It is necessary to look back over the conditions that helped bring the New Christian Right into being, asking whether these same conditions are likely to perpetuate it into the future, or whether conditions may be changing in ways that will alter its course. Analysts of social movements know the importance of looking at conditions that may, by themselves, have little to do with the shaping of a specific movement but in combination with other factors become enormously consequential. There are at least three such characteristics of American religion generally that must be a part of any discussion of the religious Right: the “this-worldly” orientation of American religion, its conviction that values matter, and its massive institutional resources. This chapter also highlights three factors that influence the way American religion is organized: the declining significance of denominationalism, the role of special purpose groups, and networks among religious leaders.Less

The Secular Pilgrimage of Orthodoxy in America

Vigen Guroian

in Fundamentalism or Tradition: Christianity after Secularism

With the notable exception of the Russian mission in Alaska, for the most part the Orthodox Church did not come to America as mission but followed its people’s departure from the homeland, often ... More

With the notable exception of the Russian mission in Alaska, for the most part the Orthodox Church did not come to America as mission but followed its people’s departure from the homeland, often under extremities of war, social upheaval, or natural disaster. There was no preparation for coming here. They left behind historical Orthodox cultures and were immersed immediately into a society that the Orthodox faith had no role in shaping, a secular society that bafflingly was also religious, though not in any familiar way. Through conversation with theologians and public intellectuals like Schmemann, Parsons, Herberg, Berger, and Berry, this essay first traces the lineage of secularism back to Christianity. The unmooring of virtue from the transcendent, more specifically from the salvific sacrifice of Christ, has yielded secularism as a “step-child” of Christianity. In response, many Orthodox Americans turn to ethnic identity as a means of imbuing daily life with the faith. This, however, is more a sign of a dying church than a means of sustaining its life. The challenge is to renew a sense of the sacred, a liturgical worldview, within the pluralism of American society.Less

“Denominationalism” in Fourth-Century Syria: Readings in Saint Ephraem’s Hymns against Heresies, Madrāshê 22–24

Sidney H. Griffith

in The Garb of Being: Embodiment and the Pursuit of Holiness in Late Ancient Christianity

This essay closely examines four of Ephraem’s metrical hymns (madrashê) “against erroneous opinion” in which the Syriac composer distinguishes between “external” and “internal” confessional ... More

This essay closely examines four of Ephraem’s metrical hymns (madrashê) “against erroneous opinion” in which the Syriac composer distinguishes between “external” and “internal” confessional adversaries. In these teaching songs, Ephraem focuses on the question of names to create a taxonomy of rival Christian groups, in a form of “denominationalism,” to articulate which groups belong theologically to the true flock of Christ.Less

The Religious Situation in the United States 175 Years After Tocqueville

José Casanova

in Crediting God: Sovereignty and Religion in the Age of Global Capitalism

This chapter gives a reading of Tocqueville as the first critic of secularization theory. By this interpretation, the deistic civil religion of the United States leads to ... More

This chapter gives a reading of Tocqueville as the first critic of secularization theory. By this interpretation, the deistic civil religion of the United States leads to the transformation of religions into free, equal, and competing theistic “denominations.” But theism is in no way kept in a private sphere, for Tocqueville shows how the religious identity, or denomination, is precisely the vehicle for attaining and exercising republican citizenship. In fact, theism casts its shadow on deism precisely because democratic politics depends in great measure on what goes on inside the churches: not only because they instill the principles of “self-interest properly understood” but also because the congregation continues to foster the idea of self-government. But the chapter also problematizes the other side of denominationalism, namely, the way in which religious identity remains insufficient to deal with the exclusion that comes about through the other vehicle of acquiring an identity in American exceptionalism, namely, through the construction of racial identities. Finally, the question of whether the theistic reading of U.S. civil religion leads to fundamentalism is discussed.Less

Serpent Handling Endorsed by the Church of God

Ralph W. Hood Jr. and W. Paul Williamson

in Them That Believe: The Power and Meaning of the Christian Serpent-Handling Tradition

This chapter discusses the acceptance of both Hensley and his serpent-handling practice into the Church of God at a time when the church's primary concern was to convert the lost and to proselytize ... More

This chapter discusses the acceptance of both Hensley and his serpent-handling practice into the Church of God at a time when the church's primary concern was to convert the lost and to proselytize wayward Christians in search of convincing demonstrations of God's power. As the Church of God transitioned toward denominationalism, it marginalized the practice of serpent handling and eventually divorced it from its history, leaving the faithful to continue as independent churches. Hensley was simply a fortuitous instrument, appearing at a critical time in history, which modeled the role of a believer from a biblical text already held central in the theology of this emerging Pentecostal church. Once noted in the text, and observed by Hensley himself, a significant number of Church of God members and its leadership were convinced and followed his example, holding firmly for a time to the practice of serpent handling as a legitimate Pentecostal sign.Less

Tradition and Change in the American Religious Landscape

in The Megachurch and the Mainline: Remaking Religious Tradition in the Twenty-first Century

Scholarly and popular accounts of the restructuring of American religion suggest that the culture of religious choice, seeker spirituality, and the move away from denominationalism have weakened the ... More

Scholarly and popular accounts of the restructuring of American religion suggest that the culture of religious choice, seeker spirituality, and the move away from denominationalism have weakened the relevancy and authority of specific religious traditions. This book has provided a window onto the ongoing process of religious change at the onset of the twenty-first century and suggests that the familiar story of restructuring needs to be amended. This chapter explains how this study of Lutheran congregations contributes to the larger account of religious change in America. It begins by examining how the colonization of Lutheranism by evangelical and non-denominational religious forces has altered the historic tradition. It then shows how these changes have affected the nature of community at several of the congregations. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how this study contributes to our understanding of the more general processes of religious and cultural change.Less

Epilogue: Back-to-the-City Jews and the Legacies of Metropolitan Urbanism

lila corwin berman

in Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion in Postwar Detroit

By the early decades of the twenty-first century, Jews in Detroit were arguably more invested in urbanism than they had been for many years. Millennial Jewish Detroit activists reinvented the ... More

By the early decades of the twenty-first century, Jews in Detroit were arguably more invested in urbanism than they had been for many years. Millennial Jewish Detroit activists reinvented the geography of the city, in effect shrinking a city that earlier Jews had helped to extend. Furthermore, millennial activists wed the space of city to their visions of American and Jewish success, as many had before them. These activists helped create an entrepreneurial hotbed in the city, where new ideas, whatever they might be, could attract the power and capital of investors. The activists all believed that cities more than other kinds of places fostered creativity and experimentation, and that gains, in some form, would best be made from entering at the ground floor of urban revitalization and reinvention in Detroit. In this most recent chapter of Jewish urbanism in Detroit, the city remained a generator of contradictory impulses—to love, to redeem, to exploit, to disdain, to remake, to be more Jewish, to be less Jewish—for the Jews in its midst. The circuitous pathways of Jews’ urban journeys generated the character of modern Jewish life in the United States, as Jews oriented and re-oriented themselves to ever-changing city spaces.Less

A Congregation of Strangers: The Mobile Infrastructure

Shari Rabin

in Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America

This chapter argues that American Jewish denominationalism developed not only to enshrine religious authority but to create cooperation, familiarity, and access among mobile American Jews who seemed ... More

This chapter argues that American Jewish denominationalism developed not only to enshrine religious authority but to create cooperation, familiarity, and access among mobile American Jews who seemed to be “strangers” to one another. Beginning with newspapers and informal social networks, leaders like Isaac Mayer Wise and Isaac Leeser worked to develop programs for traveling preachers, rabbinic credentials, and the collection of statistics. These became some of the most important goals of their new denominational bodies, the Board of Delegates of American Israelites and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which sought to familiarize and order American Jewish life. Efforts to create a national union failed because of sectarian and sectional divisions, but they did succeed in enshrining norms of congregational membership, professional leadership, and rational information throughout the nation.Less

Other Christians as Christian Others: Signs of New Christian Populations and the Urban Expansion of Seoul

Nicholas Harkness

in Handbook of Religion and the Asian City: Aspiration and Urbanization in the Twenty-First Century

This chapter explores how semiotic differentiation, class, and denominationalism have influenced the rapid postwar urbanization of Seoul and the rapid growth of Protestant Christianity in South ... More

This chapter explores how semiotic differentiation, class, and denominationalism have influenced the rapid postwar urbanization of Seoul and the rapid growth of Protestant Christianity in South Korea. It argues that these views of the city manifest as perspectives on other Christians—or, in a sense, “Christian others”—those who claim one's own Christian faith but appear alien or antithetical to it. Specifically, it considers how these views are related to worship styles that invoke, for Protestant Christians, other kinds of Protestant churches and practices in Seoul. It also examines how the preaching and prayer of other Christians are intertwined with specific times and places in the expanding city. It suggests that active differentiation of worship style by congregants contributes to the emergence of new religious institutions in particular times and places in the postwar urban migration to Seoul.Less

Introduction

Courtney Handman

in Critical Christianity: Translation and Denominational Conflict in Papua New Guinea

In this introductory chapter, Handman sets the scene for an analysis of Christian denominational conflicts among Guhu-Samane speakers of Papua New Guinea. She argues that Protestant individualism ... More

In this introductory chapter, Handman sets the scene for an analysis of Christian denominational conflicts among Guhu-Samane speakers of Papua New Guinea. She argues that Protestant individualism puts greater, not less, emphasis on Christian social groups as moral formations, and she argues that denominationalism cannot be reduced to the intrusion of politics into religious practice. Guhu-Samane processes of critique, honed through ongoing projects of Bible translation, are constituted as competing remnant churches within the larger ethno-linguistic community. These competing churches are able to proliferate differences in moral comportment predicated on the critical analysis of Guhu-Samane tradition, even while these churches are still aiming for Christian universalism. The chapter also presents an overview of the book as a whole, provides crucial background to Guhu-Samane communities, and discusses the fieldwork situation.Less

Mediating Denominational Disputes: Land Claims and the Sound of Christian Critique

Courtney Handman

in Critical Christianity: Translation and Denominational Conflict in Papua New Guinea

Taking off from a discussion of church-sect theory, this chapter looks at two modes of churches engaging in “political” acts. In the first case, members of the different Guhu-Samane churches seem ... More

Taking off from a discussion of church-sect theory, this chapter looks at two modes of churches engaging in “political” acts. In the first case, members of the different Guhu-Samane churches seem uncomfortable with the ways in which church leaders of the two revivalist churches intervened in a land claims dispute. From this perspective, denominationalism seems to follow Neibuhr’s claim as a diminishment of Christian universality. In the second case, however, members of New Life Church, Reformed Gospel Church, and the Lutheran Church seem to celebrate the ways in which their churches instantiate different claims to proper Christian worship through different musical and vocal practices. From this other perspective, denominationalism is the triumph of Christian critical practice.Less

“A regular Confederation”: Laying the Foundations of the Baptist South

Eric C. Smith

in Oliver Hart and the Rise of Baptist America

The eighteenth century was an era of religious institution-building, and no figure was more important for the birth of Baptist denominationalism in the South than Oliver Hart. In 1751 Hart drew ... More

The eighteenth century was an era of religious institution-building, and no figure was more important for the birth of Baptist denominationalism in the South than Oliver Hart. In 1751 Hart drew together the Particular Baptist churches of South Carolina to form the Charleston Association, the second Baptist association in America. Successfully transplanting ideas and models he had witnessed in the Philadelphia Association, Hart led the South’s Baptists to form a minister’s education fund, send missionaries to the western frontier, and formalize the doctrines and church practices that would define the Baptist South for the next 150 years.Less

Building the New Jerusalem: The High Tide of the Seven Sisters

Jason S. Lantzer

in Mainline Christianity: The Past and Future of America's Majority Faith

This chapter discusses how European roots and colonial founding gave American Christians all the necessary ingredients to create the Mainline of the Seven Sisters. The established denominations—the ... More

This chapter discusses how European roots and colonial founding gave American Christians all the necessary ingredients to create the Mainline of the Seven Sisters. The established denominations—the Episcopal and Congregational churches—with their cultural impact, were in place. The ending of state-sponsored churches over the first half of the nineteenth century not only unleashed the competitive nature of American denominationalism, but corresponded to the rise of the democratic impulse, which saw the creation of new denominations and the reorganization of old ones. The Seven Sisters emerged from this setting, overcoming war and dramatic societal changes, and creating a virtual establishment that lasted well into the twentieth century. The chapter shows that the Mainline of the Seven Sisters, despite the war between modernists and fundamentalists, had survived and looked toward the mid-twentieth century as a time of rebirth.Less

Introduction: Conceptualizing Emerging Evangelicalism

James S. Bielo

in Emerging Evangelicals: Faith, Modernity, and the Desire for Authenticity

This book explores how some American Evangelicals are consuming and enacting knowledge produced as part of the Emerging Church movement. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, it shows that Emerging ... More

This book explores how some American Evangelicals are consuming and enacting knowledge produced as part of the Emerging Church movement. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, it shows that Emerging Evangelicalism is organized by cultural critique, a desire for change, and grounded in the conditions of both modernity and late modernity. In its analysis of the Emerging Church movement, the book highlights a variety of themes ranging from sense of place and urbanism to dialogue, improvisation, irony, embodiment, narrative, textuality, community, ecclesiology, social memory, denominationalism, and everyday religious subjectivity. These themes reveal the inner spiritual lives of the Emerging Church's adherents, their outer practices and institutions, and their relationship to American social conditions. This introductory chapter provides an overview of Emerging Evangelicalism, explains why “authenticity” is used as the book's organizing theme, and discusses the kinds of fieldwork on which the book is based.Less

The Ultimate Reform: The Common Schools

David Nasaw

in Schooled to Order: A Social History of Public Schooling in the United States

The myths of America, though tested by the Panic of ‘37, by the political and workplace agitation of the working people, by the addition of layer after layer of urban poor, were not abandoned. ... More

The myths of America, though tested by the Panic of ‘37, by the political and workplace agitation of the working people, by the addition of layer after layer of urban poor, were not abandoned. Those who had succeeded and those who aspired to material success continued to argue that in the New World the absence of aristocratic barriers to profit-making and property-holding, combined with abundant land out West and expanding cities and towns in the Northeast, created a social situation in which opportunity was available to all. The stories of “self-made men” who through hard work and inner discipline pushed their way to success were publicized everywhere and, in times of business prosperity, with added emphasis. The success of the prosperous was the sign that virtue was rewarded in this best of all social worlds. That this was not yet the land of milk and honey, that there were poor people in the New World, did not invalidate the myths. If the promise of the New World had not yet been realized for everyone, that only demonstrated that not everyone had the character necessary to convert opportunity to material success. Poverty could be remedied by simply providing the poor with those character traits which they lacked. Among the foremost believers and most effective proselytizers of the myths of America were those men and women who led the campaign for an expanded and extended public school network in the decades preceding the Civil War. These school reformers chose as their institutional model not the Lancasterian or infant schools, which—as charity institutions—had repelled those for whom they had been designed, but the New England “district” or common schools, which were as republican and American as the charity schools were aristocratic and Old World. These district schools were open to all the children of the community. They were supported by district taxes, state funds, and by “rates”—tuition—paid by parents. Those who could not afford their rates could apply for rate exemptions. The common schools were primary schools. They taught the rudiments to all who needed such instruction. Achievement, not age, was the criterion for entrance. The youngest pupils might be seven or eight; the oldest could be in their early twenties. Less