Religion in America Research Papers (original) (raw)

The documentary depicts the journey of a teenage girl and her mother who move to California in 2012 because of the Syrian civil war. Together they learn to live in a different culture and face challenges to their traditions - all while... more

- by Edith Szanto
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- American Studies, Gender Studies, Middle East Studies, Religion in America
- by Yaakov Ariel
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- American History, Jewish Studies, Religion in America, Jewish Mysticism
- by Philip Goff
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- Marketing, History, American History, Cultural Studies

While in the scholarship on the NOI there has been much discussion about the press's coverage of the NOI in the early 1930s, there has been almost no attempt to analyze the group's own use of media to promote its message during this initial phase of the movement. In 1933 and 1934, NOI members wrote a number of letters and editorials that were published in both Detroit and nationally-distributed African American newspapers. And, in the late summer of 1934, the group published its first periodical, the Final Call to Islam. Although for the most part, the content of these publications simply reflects the known ideology of the NOI of the early 1930s, this chapter will argue that these pieces add depth to our understanding and appreciation of both early NOI voices and of what was important for the movement at the time. For instance, in addition to promoting Fard's principal doctrines about the origins and destiny of African Americans, there is a strong emphasis on the current activities of Muslims around the world, which shows for us how much the early NOI identified with Muslims generally. We also see a stress on having a proper diet and good health, echoing Fard's ideas about " how to eat to live. " Perhaps the most valuable aspect about these publications, however, is that they give us a closer look at the leaders and followers of the early NOI. We see, for example, how precisely early NOI members—including Elijah Muhammad, who wrote several of the pieces that will be examined—interpreted and put in their own words Fard's teachings. This gives us a better glimpse at how NOI ideas were constructed and expressed by its African American members at the time. Most scholarship discussing early NOI discourse has not relied on pieces written by followers during this initial phase of the NOI—instead, there has been a reliance on the group's official teachings written by Fard, original NOI members' interviews and speeches that were often recorded many years after 1934, and early 1930s sensationalist newspaper reports about the NOI, which often contained quotes from members that might have been edited or taken out of context. A brief comparison will be made between these 1930s pieces and some 1950s NOI writings. Finally, these early publications also give us a few small, but reliable and important details about the group's structure and growth at the time.

This course is a sprawling road trip into the vast highways and byways of the American landscape; it’s a horror story, a mystery, a romance, a western, a fantasy, and ultimately a look into the heart of American culture. Taking inspiration from Neil Gaiman’s 2001 novel, American Gods, we will explore the colorful, contested history of religion in the United States from the colonial era to the present. We will analyze the tensions between a quest for an American religious consensus and an abiding religious and cultural pluralism. This is a story not only of American gods and spirits, but more importantly, of the people who made them real. The United States is a quilted patchwork of immigrant cultures with a diverse and ever-growing number of religious beliefs and practices. Gods and spirits were carried to America over centuries of migration by peoples from around the world. New gods have arisen, replacing and mingling with those of the past: the new gods of celebrity, media, popular culture, and technology. Throughout the course, we will explore the meaning of religion, secularism, memory, and community, as we are reminded of the many stories that make up America. By reading, discussing, and writing about a variety of scholarly approaches to religion (e.g., historical, sociological, anthropological, theological), we will learn how to analyze the place of religion in contemporary American culture in a critical, constructive, and collaborative fashion. In addition to three course books, we will read short theoretical essays on popular religion, sacred space, and material culture.

In her “Toward a Metamodern Reading of Spiritual but Not Religious Mysticisms,” Linda C. Ceriello frames being SBNR as evidencing a new means of engaging with mysticisms through what has been described as a metamodern epistemic shift. By way of examining how mystical material “performs” in a post-postmodern, secular milieu, she investigates the potential utility of the theoretical category of metamodernism that some are putting forth as a successor to postmodernism. She asks how this new category might help us to both account for shifting levels of normativity around mysticism in contemporary culture, and to expose a new dimension of the choice to identify as SBNR. She then posits the significance of the relationship between the two as a reflexive construction of spaces of liminality analogous to the mystical encounter itself, which mirror contemporary individuals’ felt experiences: of being in-between, of being neither this nor that, and a sense of being both/and —secular and spiritual. Theorizing of a metamodern sensibility is further applied in addressing the significant roles that pop culture and social media have played as the New Age gave way to the SBNR. This move, she suggests, has paved the way for a cultural narrative of a different sort--one that may offer not only a new angle on universalist (modern) and constructivist (postmodern) cultural readings, but a kind of reconciliation of the two that is consequently uniquely reflective of, and responsive to, contemporary secular-spiritualities. Such an analysis aptly culminates in a reconsideration of the oft-cited (and usually pejorative) critique of the social mission and “community” (if any) inherent in being SBNR.

The Gnostic Mass of the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (E.G.C.) suggests a heterosexual gender binary in which the female Priestess seated on the altar as the sexual and fertile image of the divine feminine is directed by the male Priest’s activity, desire and speech. The apparent contradiction between the empowered individual and the polarized gender role was examined by comparing the ritual symbolism of the feminine with the interpretations of four Priestesses and three Priests (three pairs plus one). Findings suggest that the Priestess’ role in the Gnostic Mass is associated with channeling, receptivity, womb, cup, and fertility, while the Priest’s role is associated with enthusiasm, activity, phallus, lance, and virility. Despite this strong gender duality, the Priestesses asserted that their role was personally and spiritually empowering, and they maintained that heterosexual and polarized gendered roles are necessary in a transformative ritual which ultimately reveals the godlike unified individual.

- by Ellen Randolph
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- Religion in America, Gender and Sexuality, American Religion, Western Esotericism

Modern postural yoga is an amalgamation of practices that continues to defy traditional explanatory models that understand religious, spiritual, and secular to be mutually exclusive categories. In this project, I conduct in-depth interviews with yoga instructors
in the Ozarks. In these interviews, I asked my informants to explain how they understand religious, spiritual, and secular. I then asked if and how they would use those words to describe yoga. These interviews revealed that religious, spiritual, and secular are not mutually exclusive, but are instead related, blended, and connected, especially when used to describe yoga. These findings inform my proposed explanatory model which reflects how my interviewees talk about yoga with respect to these categories.

- by Kimberley Pingatore
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- Religion in America, Yoga, Modern Yoga Studies
- by Yaakov Ariel
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- Religion in America, Israel Studies, American Religion, Jewish - Christian Relations
- by Kate Y Gibeault
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- Religion, Ethnography, Religion in America, Prisons
- by R. Patrick Reeves
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- American History, American Studies, Religion in America, American Religion
- by Eleni Vryza
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- Multiculturalism, History of Education, Multilingualism, Religion in America

In recent years, scholars have offered valuable critiques of American Jewish exceptionalism that reveal the historical inaccuracy of an exceptionalist scholarly framework. However, as this essay explains, untethering Jewish studies scholarship completely from exceptionalism discourse may risk overlooking the prevalence of these beliefs and what they tell us about those who propagated them. Exceptionalism does not need to be historically accurate for it to warrant attention from scholars. Nor must scholars approve of exceptionalism, or deem it a positive, for it to be a worthy subject of study. Scholars may indeed view American Jewish exceptionalism as a fantasy that prevents believers from seeing the reality-in particular the problems-of their situation, but the fact that this fantasy had so many fervent espousers should make it a matter of interest. Examining the trail of American Jewish exceptionalist voices reveals the multiple ways these voices have been deployed.

- by The Maydan and +1
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- Religion in America, Space and Place, Islamic Studies, Sufism
- by Omri Elisha
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- New Religious Movements, Religion in America, Mormonism, Charisma

This paper begins with a look at the American Religious Right, stemming from its roots in the troubled racial politics of the 1960s and its consolidation and rise to power in the 1970s and 1980s. It will then consider how its repertoire has been largely narrowed to a pair of hot-button social issues – abortion and gay marriage – and critically evaluate the claim as to whether we are living in a “post-Religious Right” world. Secondly, it will assess the possibility for a new liberal coalition, a so-called “Religious Left,” and which social groups might possibly form the basis of such an effort. While understanding that the delicate interface of religion and politics must be treated with care and is a highly subjective matter, it will seek to unite the good intentions of liberal political theory with the driving moral and spiritual fulfillment of religion at its best.

- by Hilary Rhodes
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- American History, Religion in America, Religion and Politics, Political Science
- by Lucas Carmichael
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- Religion, Translation Studies, Daoism, Religion in America

The purpose of this paper was to explore the common threads running through both traditional religious institutions and Hip Hop music in African-American culture. The paper first attempts to understand what religion truly is within the context of 21st century society, and concurrently apply this definition to an alternative form of spirituality in the form of Hip Hop culture. Ultimately, through the dialogues traditionally expressed in rap music, individuals can explore issues of identity and protest in a unifying and thought-provoking manner, and can access a population that is extremely reluctant and unresponsive to the more traditional modes of American religion.

- by Matthew Simpson
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- Sociology, Religion in America, William James, Hip-Hop/Rap
- by M. Cooper Harriss
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- American Literature, Religion, Religion in America, African American Literature

Research on religion and globalization is revealing that religious responses to global dynamics have been highly varied, positioned across a broad spectrum that ranges from the defensive to the open and creative. However, attempts to engage this area of studies in the case of Japanese religions have been unexpectedly few and fragmentary; the use of full-scale globalization theory remains underdeveloped. Sometimes an underlying conceptual obstacle is that the dominating perspective is reduced to the dimension of worldwide institutional expansion, which prevents a full engagement with the much more complex dynamics. In other cases, there may simply be resistance to the application of contemporary globalization theories to concrete case studies in religion. Possibly also some features peculiar to Japanese history have delayed the application of globalization perspectives to its religious worlds. Based on these premises the articles by Inoue Nobutaka, Ugo Dessì, Galen Amstutz, Victoria Rose Montrose, Girardo Rodriguez Plasencia, Regina Yoshie Matsue, and Rafael Shoji and Frank Usarski collected in this special issue address several examples and themes in this diversified, complex world as part of the ongoing work of addressing our existing gaps in awareness.

- by Ugo Dessì
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- New Religious Movements, Sociology of Religion, Japanese Studies, Globalization

People are more than the shackles that bind them; this is the truth of Exodus narratives. During the Great Migration, seven million people traded the southern landscape for the northern Promised Land. Today, more than seven million people are imprisoned, on probation, or on parole. The continuities between slavery and imprisonment are undeniable, and segregation laws under Jim Crow nearly parallel the policies formerly imprisoned people navigate today. However, marginalization through the prison system is only part of the story, just as legalized subordination was only part of the story for black people a century ago. Scholars of religion have illuminated the uniquely urban sacred order created by southern transplants to northern meccas, and, in so doing, have shown how migration itself was a salvific event, not just the result of socioeconomic push-pull factors. Our narrative of religion in a time of mass criminalization must take this consciously liberatory turn: to refuse to yoke black life to the stranglehold of punitive punishment and to dwell instead in the complexities of being and being-together inside our prison nation, where currently and formerly imprisoned people and their families are building their own Promised Lands.

- by Laura McTighe
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- Religion in America, Black feminism, Forced Migration, Chicago

It is not too often that a scholar of Indian religion can become embroiled in controversy, but recent events have provided opportunity where none existed before. Scholars such as Wendy Doniger and Sheldon Pollock are the recipients of petitions to suppress their work, controversies over textbooks on Hinduism continue to burn in California like forest fires, and the University of California-Irvine refused a donation of $3 million donation (a fortune for one working in religious studies) because of its connection to alleged Hindu Rightwing groups, a connection that was drawn by professors of Indian history. While it is tempting to see this as evidence of newfound interest in Indian religion beyond the halls of academia, I offer a cold shower—an assessment of the cause of these problems and a fairly simple (but not fairly cheap) solution to them. The cause of the problem is that American Hinduism, unlike other major religions in American, does not have its own intellectual space. This would be a place in which the issues of tradition and faith could be scrutinized in the light of reason and logic, with the support of religious practice and piety, and informed by the relevant languages, histories, and texts. It would engage the great traditions of learned Hindu literature and the many hundreds of scholars who currently know those traditions, as well as the terms and methods of contemporary academic discourse. A goal of such an institution would be to critically examine the ancient tradition, and produce literature that speaks with confidence and wisdom to the social, philosophical, and political issues that confront American Hinduism today—an ancient tradition with a contemporary vision. Despite the size and affluence of the American Hindu community and the enduring appeal of Indian religiosity in America, American Hindus have not created a forum for objective and tradition-based reflection. That is the source of the controversies we see today. Why have American Hindus not developed this space? The reason for this simple—it is money, or lack thereof. The space where theological reflection usually occurs in this country is the universities, colleges, and seminaries. This might be in well-known Christian based divinity schools at Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Notre Dame, Columbia or Claremont, but there are scores of options in this country. There is also the Hebrew Union College with Campuses in Manhattan, Cincinnati and LA, and the Naropa University (established in 1974) for Buddhist religion, but that is in addition to bridge-building institutions between Buddhist monks and academics. These places, however, are not presently equipped to support theological investigation of the Hindu traditions by and for men and women who are themselves Hindu.

- by Jonathan Edelmann
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- Religion, Buddhism, Hinduism, Comparative Religion
- by Zaheer Kazmi
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- Critical Theory, Religion, New Religious Movements, Comparative Religion
- by Jan Nattier
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- Buddhism, Buddhism in North America, Religion in America, American Religion

The essay examines the relationship between Conservative Judaism and the neo-Hasidic movement that has come about in the 1960 s-1970 s in American Judaism. It analyzes moments of interaction and mutual influences, pointing to the social and cultural changes that triggered them. It identifies the ways in which neo-Hasidism and Conservative Judaism affected each other's character, and the manner Neo-Hasidism offered Conservative Judaism new resources to replace older paradigms. Such innovations included a shift towards increased lay participation, and greater emphasize on spiritual experiences. Although such transformations have taken place unevenly among Conservative communities, they have made a considerable impact on the movement.

- by Yaakov Ariel
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- American Studies, Jewish Studies, Religion in America, Countercultural Studies

This article proposes an interpretative study of Daren Aronofsky and Ari Handel's film Noah (2014). Our main assertion is that the film attempts to present a contemporary interpretation of the biblical flood story by incorporating values and urgent issues of the 21st century Western society, such as environmentalism, fundamentalism and eco-feminism. The paper details various traditions that serve as inspirations to the filmmakers in the re-telling of the flood myth, and elaborates on the midrashic traditions that were intertwined – or else omitted – in the process of creating the innovative cinematic midrash. It also points to the psychologization of God in the film and its theological implications.

- by Chad Thralls
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- Religion in America, Syllabus, History of Religion In the United States

The history of religion is a history of movement. But what happens when religion is on the move? Studies of religion and migration have often treated religion as a resource for people who are coping with the shock of displacement in a foreign world. In this conference, however, we are interested in examining how an interdisciplinary approach to migratory experiences might illuminate the dynamic interplay between the limited possibilities in which people find themselves and the capabilities they nonetheless possess for creating viable, even vibrant, forms of social life. By treating religion as an embodied and spatial phenomenon that intersects with political and economic structures in complex and often unexpected ways, this conference aims not only to contribute to the nascent field of religion and migration but also to deepen its theoretical and methodological repertoire for future studies.

- by Laura McTighe and +1
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- Religion in America, Refugee Studies, Media, Religion, and Culture, Pilgrimage

The SBNR is viewed as evidencing a new means of engaging with mysticisms through what has been described as a metamodern epistemic shift. By way of examining how mystical material “performs” in a post-postmodern, secular milieu, I investigate the potential utility of the theoretical category of metamodernism that some are putting forth as a successor to postmodernism. I will ask how this new category might help us in two broad ways: 1) to account for shifting levels of normativity around mysticism in contemporary culture; and 2) to expose a new dimension of the choice to identify as “SBNR.” This choice will be explored specifically as a reflexive means of constructing spaces of liminality analogous to the mystical encounter itself, which mirror contemporary individuals’ felt experiences: of being in-between, of being neither this nor that, and, most germane for my argument here—a sense of being both/and —secular and spiritual. Theorizing of a metamodern sensibility will also be applied in addressing the significant roles that pop culture and media have played as the New Age gave way to the SBNR. This move paved the way for a cultural narrative of a different sort--one that may offer not only the possibility of a reconciliation of universalist (modern) and constructivist (postmodern) cultural readings, but the creation of something consequently uniquely responsive to contemporary secular-spiritualities.

- by Linda C Ceriello
- •
- Religion in America, Popular Culture, Postmodernism, Comparative Mysticism

This article examines evangelical gender paradigms as expressed through a 700 Club cooking segment facilitated by Gordon Robertson, the son of Pat Robertson – founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), The 700 Club, Christian Coalition, and one-time presidential candidate. Several themes converge within this cooking show, including health and nutrition, family ritual, and gender roles. Using the cooking segment as data, I draw on scholarship on body, gender, family and ritual to argue that evangelical discourses are labile in their responses to recent socio-cultural shifts and suggest that ‘Sunday Dinners: Cooking with Gordon’ defies caricatures of evangelical gender formation and signals a shift to soft-patriarchy and quasi-egalitarianism, at least within public, visual discourse. ‘Sunday Dinners’ underscores the centrality of the family in evangelical discourse – even as conceptions of gender are in flux – as it seeks to facilitate everyday rituals via cooking and eating together.

- by Travis Cooper
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- Gender Studies, Family studies, Religion in America, Sociology of Food and Eating
- by Yaakov Ariel
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- Religion in America, Israel Studies, Religion and Politics, Israel/Palestine

Serving on a mission is almost an indispensable part of the image of the adherents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons, quasi-Christian new religious movement. The next text attempts to analyse and take a closer look at the theme of calling and preparing for the ministry of being a missionary as an attribute of this Church that was founded by Joseph Smith. Starting from an upbringing in the family and social expectations of the Church’s members through education in the Missionary Training Center, we can follow the vocation path and the creative process of the future Mormon missionary who preach the Gospel in various corners of the world. Missionary ministry is important in the life of each Mormon believer, even those who didn’t serve as a missionary, because it leaves a lasting imprint and aff ects the minds of the members of this new religious group for the rest of their lives.