Seminars, Young Scholars, and Conference Proceedings at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture

Paul Harvey

One report and two upcoming seminars/opportunities at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at IUPUI for you to be aware of.

First, as noted here before, the next (and, for now, final) round of the Young Scholars in American Religion Program is upcoming, and applications to participate are due by February 15. Here is information on the program and how to apply; you can click also on the "young scholars program" label on the right of this blog to see all of our various entries about this in the past.

Next, the Center is hosting a NEH Summer Institute for teachers, July 12-30 2010, on "The Many and the One: Religion, Pluralism, and American History." Click on the link for full information, the schedule, and information on how to apply (applications due March 2, 2010); here is a brief description:

Thank you for taking an interest in The Many and the One: Religion, Pluralism, and American History, a Summer Institute for School Teachers to be held at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) from July 12 to July 30, 2010. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, this three-week institute for teachers focuses on religion in American history and culture. Our Institute is part of the NEH’s “We the People” initiative, a program designed to encourage and enhance the teaching, study, and understanding of American history, culture, and democratic principles.

This institute will support the studies of twenty-five talented teachers from across the nation as they join with nationally renowned scholars to explore how religion has shaped, and been shaped by, the American experience. The Institute directors, Philip Goff, Arthur Farnsley, and Rachel Wheeler, are all noted scholars in their field, whose work encompasses a wide range of subject matter and methodologies.

Finally, a posting of great interest: last summer the Center ran the 1st Biennial Conference on Religion and American Culture; our contributor Linford Fisher attended and so did our contributor Seth Dowland, whose thoughts are here. The proceedings from the conference have now been published and can be accessed (as a pdf file) here. Comments and presentations comes from many of the stars of the field, including Jon Butler, Amanda Porterfield, Robert Orsi, Daniel Walker Howe, and many others. I plan to blog about this further once I have a chance to read over more of these contributions carefully.

The Vigil of Epiphany

 

A joyful vigil which, even as kept under the traditional calendar, did not involve fasting on the part of the faithful, nor violet vestments for the priest celebrating the Mass. Let us prepare for the great manifestation of the Lord.

History. What Is It Good For? Absolutely -- Something.

Paul Harvey

Especially for you undergrads. and grad. students who read this blog, some thoughts, links, and posts on the job market for historians, and the job possibilities for undergraduate majors in history (happily, the latter appears considerably more open-ended at present).

Tenured Radical asks and offers a number of observations and suggestions on the question, How Should Graduate Schools Respond to the Bad Job Market, a topic that also got a lot of attention at the AHA last week and spurred a classic supply-side versus demand-side discussion (i.e., is the declining academic job market due to decline in demand in relation to supply of PhDs, or is it because that supply-demand imbalance has to do with deliberate university policies, inspired by the corporatization of the university, which have created it? Might it have to do with an "intentional restructuring of demand by administrators?"). The comments are coming in furiously from Tenured Radical's posts, so make sure to follow them as well. A challenge to the conventional narrative comes from Marc Bousquet (author of How the University Works) here.

Then, John Fea (whose blog also covered the AHA extensively) has a fantastic series What Can You Do With A History Major, 17 parts and counting so far, and featuring lots of former history majors who are now in a wide variety of fields, doing just about everything imaginable. This is a series I hope to see awarded a "best series of posts" in some future blogging awards competition; in the meantime, when students ask you that question this semester, you can send them there; and undergraduates reading this blog, do not pass go, just click the link above for some good thoughts on the perennial question of the humanities undergraduate.

"Vocations are Still a “Super-Priority”"

From The Catholic Key
By Bishop Robert W. Finn

Kansas City-St. Joseph

In my first months as bishop of the diocese I said Vocations were a “Super Priority.” While we have had a meaningful increase in vocations to priesthood, the diaconate, and some new vocations to consecrated life, I still offer this intention for more vocations to priesthood and Consecrated Life with fervor in my daily prayer. I hope you do also.

We are reaching the midpoint of the Year for Priests, inaugurated by Pope Benedict XVI last June. How proud I am of our priests who do so much for you, God’s people. Still, they need more help, particularly as the pastoral needs seem always to increase. This year, please God, we will ordain four new priests; and it remains possible that in 2012 we could celebrate the ordination of eight or nine new priests at once. I haven’t figured out how we will get everyone in the Cathedral; a pleasing dilemma!

Am I greedy to suggest that we need more priests? I believe that God is calling more men to this wonderful vocation, and we have to listen carefully and prepare well so that your sons can hear and answer that call.

What kind of life awaits the priest? To be sure, there are many joys, and also challenges. The priest is helped by God to give himself to many people. He shares in the greatest joys of people’s lives and is with them in times of hardship and sorrow. He is a pastor, a shepherd, a teacher, and spiritual father. He stands in the place of Jesus Christ, particularly in the Sacrifice of the Mass and in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

How does a man discern a possible vocation to priesthood? The healthy man (healthy in body, mind and soul), as he matures, wants to give himself in an honest and generous way. It is important and normal that he sees the beauty of marriage, and its central meaning and purpose in society. At the same time, he realizes he has a spiritual dimension to his life and he wants to listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and follow God’s call wherever it may take him. He works hard at every task before him, and finds joy in generously reaching out to others. He studies with zeal. He prays. He establishes caring friendships, and determines to live a moral life, growing in the frequent reception of the sacraments, particularly of Confession and Holy Eucharist.

As a man experiences this spiritual depth to his life, he does not seek a vocation that makes him materially rich or famous. Instead, having realized something of the cost and demands of authentic human love, he is ready to trust God and give himself to others out of love for God. He realizes that the Father in heaven has loved him a lot, and the awareness of this love and mercy makes him want to follow God’s plan in his life. Our seminarians are responding to this vocation to the priesthood. Our priests are living this out with dedication. Keep praying for them to persevere.

The role and support of parents is very important to those who are discerning God’s call. Your sons (and daughters) look up to you for approval. They should. Your love for them is unconditional and unselfish. I do not suggest that you should urge your sons to go to seminary, but pray for them, that they do whatever God wants for them. Support them in their search. I pledge once again to our parents that if we receive their sons as our seminarians we will do all in our power to see they get good formation.

Over the course of my priesthood, I have also had occasion to meet many outstanding men and women Religious. I was taught by and have worked closely with several Orders of Religious Women. There is a real renewal taking place in these vocations today. I have established an office for Consecrated Life, and we stand ready to direct young women and men who may be drawn to Religious life as priests, sisters or brothers.

The Devil, the Earthquake, Pat Robertson, and Some More Assholes

According to Peter Marshall, God decided to take out New Orleans with Katrina (because of, umm, something about gay people living in the French Quarter; or something; but actually the French Quarter escaped Katrina almost entirely unscathed, so I guess God's aim isn't so good); now, according to Pat Robertson, He has decided to go after Haiti. Who's next? If we're lucky, this line of Providential interpretation will find its way into the Texas state history textbooks (and more on that here).

Pragmatic Saint

Editor's Note: Below is the first of two reviews/assessments I hope to post of John Wigger's new biography of Francis Asbury. The first comes from our new contributor Christopher Jones, who is studying Methodism and other subjects at William and Mary.

“The Pragmatic Saint”

Review of John Wigger, American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

by Christopher Jones

“Why do we have no modern critical biography of Francis Asbury, one of the most revered and influential figures in the early republic?” (Nathan Hatch, 1989)

It took twenty years, but someone has finally answered Nathan Hatch’s call for a scholarly biography of Francis Asbury. John Wigger, who studied under Hatch at Notre Dame, has published American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists, a highly readable and lively portrait of the Methodist bishop who shepherded the movement through its early growing pains in America to set it on a course to become the largest Protestant denomination in antebellum America. Contradicting decades-old assessments that “no biographer should try to make [Asbury] lovable, for this he would never allow himself to be,” Wigger concludes that the exact opposite was the case: “Asbury loved and was loved, despite his flaws” (p. 416).

Wigger’s biography does much more than simply satisfy a decades-old call for a critical biography of Asbury and refute simplistic and outdated characterizations of the man, though.

It challenges common assumptions about religious leadership in American history. As Wigger noted in a recent interview, one of his goals in writing this book was to “raise questions for readers about the meaning of religious leadership in America.” Attributing scholarly neglect of Asbury to the fact that he doesn’t neatly fit any of the “three camps” in which “key figures in American religious history are generally lumped” (“charismatic communicators,” “intellectuals,” and “domineering autocrats”), Wigger contends that Asbury’s life forces us to nuance such categorization and look to alternate models of religious leadership. Never known as an eloquent speaker or innovative theologian and having left behind only a scant collection of published writings, Asbury is usually characterized as a rigid autocrat singularly committed to maintaining his hierarchical control by virtue of his status as the head of the Methodist episcopacy in the United States. Such a description, according to Wigger, ignores Asbury’s deeply-rooted piety, his ability to interact and communicate with individuals in intimate settings, his sensitivity to shifts in the surrounding culture (and his related ability to react and adapt), and his organizational genius. Asbury, Wigger maintains, led by example in supervising the force of itinerant missionaries he organized and led. He steered clear of politics (basically hiding out for two solid years during the height of the Revolutionary War), lived a life of relative poverty (never owning a home or plot of land, thus shunning the things of this world), never married (in an effort to more single-mindedly serve the Church), and traveled relentlessly to both preach and maintain personal contact with those he was given charge over (so as to be able to more effectively appoint preachers to locales better suited to different personalities and backgrounds). 

According to Wigger, “Asbury had a better feel for the tension between faith and culture than most of the religious leaders around him” (p. 417). He consistently navigated this tension by exhibiting a pragmatic approach to nearly all tensions within Methodism in an effort to allow the church to grow. He was committed to Arminian theology but never was as strident in his critiques of Calvinism as other Methodists (including Wesley) were. “Theological exactitude didn’t concern him as much as it did Wesley, Wigger suggests. Instead, Asbury read widely in theological and devotional writings in an effort to adequately assess “the intellectual currents of the day, so that he could guide the movement to engage them” (p. 107). He never experienced the miraculous and visionary episodes that other Methodist converts did, but forthrightly refused to automatically reject such experience as heretical or dangerous, and encouraged intimate communal gatherings (class meetings and love feasts) and later adopted camp meetings in an effort to nurture immediate and emotional religious experience. God, Asbury maintained, could manifest Himself differently to different people. While such pragmatism often allowed Methodism to prosper and grow, it sometimes had more negative consequences. Such was the case in Asbury’s shifting commitment to abolition and antislavery. Initially an advocate of requiring all Methodists to emancipate their slaves and no longer participate in the practice, Asbury later decided to allow individual conferences within the movement to decide for themselves whether local clergy and laity could own slaves and remain in good standing with the MEC. Practical commitment to institutional growth trumped ideological devotion to morality.

While Wigger’s biography thus provides a lively and provocative portrait of a complex religious leader, it also succeeds in revealing a detailed and intimate account of early American Methodism. Methodist dissenters and schismatics are granted a greater role in the story of American Methodism than in other accounts of the movement (including Wigger’s own earlier treatment, Taking Heaven by Storm), and several short but illuminating biographies of lesser-known leaders with the MEC are embedded within the larger narrative. In following Asbury’s daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly travels, relationships, and interactions, readers catch a glimpse of the growing pains associated with Methodism’s rise to prominence. Instead of simply noting that Methodism grew immensely during the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, Wigger traces the ups and downs of that process, illustrating in the process that Methodist growth was never a guarantee, constantly being threatened by discontent dissenters, rival religious groups, and regional, theological, and ideological disputes within the MEC itself. Asbury’s singular commitment to seeing Methodism prosper in its American setting thus produced mixed results. But that commitment, combined with the dedication and piety of Asbury, qualifies him for the title of “American Saint” granted him by Wigger. 

I was disappointed in Wigger’s occasional failure to engage relevant literature on certain topics. In his otherwise excellent treatment of Asbury’s complicated relationship with Richard Allen and other black Methodist preachers, for example, he fails to cite or engage Richard Newman’s insightful biography of Allen entirely (reviewed at RiAH last year). But such omissions do little to detract from the value of this perceptive and thoughtful offering from Wigger. 

Throughout the book, Wigger’s admiration for Asbury shines through (he notes with apparent satisfaction in one footnote that upon completing his manuscript he “was surprised to find how closely Asbury resembled the leaders described” in a recent book on what makes modern businesses and leaders successful (p. 425, n. 17)). Perhaps previous biographers of Asbury refused to recognize as a lovable figure because they themselves felt no affection for the man. Such is not the case with Wigger. One senses in reading American Saint that Wigger sincerely enjoyed the extensive research and writing that went into this biography because he not only respects but genuinely admires Francis Asbury. Others will likely feel the same after reading the book. This is an important contribution to American religious history, and readers will discover a much more detailed and rich account of Asbury and early Methodism than what I’ve been able to cover here.

---

• Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 220.
• L.C. Rudolph, Francis Asbury (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1966), 220.

Family the Focus of US Vocations Week

Click HERE to visit Vatican Radio website and listen to audio file of an interview with Fr. David Toups, director of the Secretariat of Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, discuss obstacles to the promotion of vocations in the US. (look for small speaker icon at the end of the paragraph)

'Responsible, family-focused and vocation-oriented -- meet Generation XD"

While the article below is not an article about Catholic Vocations, it is an interesting article none the less...

From The Independent (UK)

Today's 8-14-year-olds will embrace their digital culture to create a financially responsible, ambitious and environmentally-aware generation, according to the largest poll of its kind in Europe.

Nicknamed "Generation XD" by entertainment giant and the survey's commissioner Disney, the digitally-aware European adults of the future will be fundamentally different from today's Generation X, the report suggests. Disney predicts that today's young people will eschew their celebrity-dominated upbringing to focus on traditional family values and traditional vocations. In every country surveyed, "Mum" and "Dad" were the two people most admired in the world, whilst the top five future professions overall were vet, teacher, footballer, doctor and police officer.

"As the kids of Generation X, who embraced all mod cons in their twenties, you'd expect Generation XD to be fully versed in how the internet can help them." said Tom Dunmore, consulting editor of technology magazine Stuff. "What's interesting though, is how they are embracing both cutting edge technology and traditional family values in their approach to life."

"While David Beckham does inevitably get a mention, fame and celebrity are secondary to family and they aspire to be vets and teachers rather than singers and celebrities, which is both surprising and encouraging."

Disney also believes that the credit-crunched environment today's 8-14-year-olds have grown up in has had a profound effect on their attitude to finances. The survey revealed that 70 percent save their pocket money instead of spending it immediately, and 64 percent would rather work for themselves than for somebody else. An impressive 97 percent of Generation XD believed that it was important to care for the planet, with 74 percent already recycling regularly.

Disney interviewed over 3,000 8-14-year-olds in six countries (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain) to compile the study, the largest pan-European survey of the age group. Despite the fact that children born between 1995 and 2001 have witnessed more technological developments during their youth than any other generation, respondents overwhelmingly used technology to improve face-to-face interaction - face-to-face contact is still the most preferable way to meet up with friends (30 percent) beating texting (15 percent), online chat (14 percent) and mobile (8 percent).

A Look at the State of Vocations in France

ROME, January 12, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Catholic Church in France, among the places where the fashionable “liberalism” of the 1960s and ‘70s has most taken hold, is dying out, with Mass attendance, priestly vocations and seminarians at record lows. At the same time, the growth of the doctrinally and liturgically “traditional” movements, who tend to be strongly pro-life and pro-family, is continuing.

The Institut français d'opinion publique (IFOP Institute) has just issued its survey on the situation of the Church in France and reports that the French Catholic Church is in freefall. Between1965 and 2009, the number of French identifying themselves as Catholics fell from 81 per cent to 64 per cent. The number attending Mass once a week or more fell from 27 per cent to 4.5 per cent in the same period.

The statistics, published in the Catholic weekly La Croix, show the effects of institutionalized “liberalism” in Catholic teaching. Sixty-three per cent of those who still consider themselves Catholic believe that all religions are the same; 75 per cent asked for an “aggiornamento” in the Church to reconsider Catholic teaching forbidding artificial contraception, while 68 per cent said the same thing for abortion.

According to official Catholic Church statistics, the total number of Catholic marriages (-28.4%), baptisms (-19.1%), confirmations (-35.3%), as well as priests (-26.1%), and religious sisters (-23.4%), has continued to fall between 1996 and 2006.

Statistics compiled by the traditionalist Catholic group Paix Liturgique show that the decline is sharpest in the most doctrinally “liberal” dioceses with regard to priests and future ordinations. Due to the critical shortage of vocations to the priesthood, it is estimated that up to a third of the dioceses of the Catholic Church in France - some dating to the second century AD - will be forced to close or amalgamate by 2025.

In November last year, Paix Liturgique reported that only 9000 priests are serving the Catholic faithful in France. In 1990, the total number of ordinations in the country was 90. Paris had 10, with two for a local independent religious order. Seven are predicted for 2010, and four for 2011.

There are fewer than 750 seminarians currently studying for the priesthood, with about a hundred of these being for religious orders, not dioceses. The diocese of Pamiers, Belfort, Agen and Perpignan have no seminarians. The drop in vocations to the priesthood will result, the group said, in at least one third of French dioceses either effectively ceasing to exist or being forced to amalgamate over the next 15 years.

But in small pockets where traditional liturgical practice, combined with traditional moral doctrine, is encouraged, French Catholicism is flourishing. Two years ago, Pope Benedict issued the document “Summorum Pontificum,” allowing the use of the pre-Vatican II Mass in Latin. Despite it remaining a “taboo” subject to the liberal faction of the French episcopate, the older rite, what is now being called the Extraordinary Form, is acting as a catalyst for growth in the few areas where it has been accepted by bishops.

More than 14 per cent of ordinations in France were for the Extraordinary Form in 2009, according to Paix Liturgique, with 15 French priests ordained for it. Almost 20 per cent of seminarians, 160, are destined for the Extraordinary Form. The group notes that if the current trends continue, in a few more years more than a quarter of all French seminarians will be studying for the older form of the liturgy, a rite that naturally selects against doctrinal and moral “liberalism.”

According to a CSA poll taken in September 2008, a third of practicing Catholics in France said they would willingly attend a traditional Mass if it were available.

In September, Archbishop Dominique Rey of the southern diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, ordained two priests to his diocese in what is now being called the “Extraordinary Form.”

This move, though heavily criticized by many in the liberal factions of the French Church, followed the ordination of 14 priests and 11 deacons in the newer “Novus Ordo” form in June, demonstrating that the two forms can live side by side.

Paix Liturgique reports that the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon has about 80 seminarians in the only seminary in the world that trains priests in both the pre-Vatican II and the newer rite.

In July, Paix Liturgique reported significant growth in Mass attendance in areas that have allowed the use of the older form. In addition to the existing 132 “authorized” places of worship and 184 served by the canonically irregular Society of Saint Pius X, an additional 72 new chapels and churches have been allowed for the use of the Extraordinary Form. This represents an increase from 55 per cent in two years, compared to an increase of between 2 and 5 per cent between 1988 and 2007.

Even more unexpectedly, the requests to dioceses from the laity for the celebration of the Extraordinary Form, have also dramatically increased. Paix Liturgique reports that more than 350 groups of French Catholic families have formally requested the older form of the Mass from their dioceses all over France and more than 600 groups have formed to promote the older form and have asked for it informally, making direct requests to parish priests.

By Hilary White

Bodies of Belief and Christian Nationists Revisited

Paul Harvey

Over at Juvenile Instructor, Jonathan Stapley has some interesting thoughts and important critiques on ritual healing among early American Baptists as covered in Janet Lindman's Bodies of Belief: Baptist Community in Early America, a book John Fea previously reviewed for us on this blog. As a researcher in early Mormon healing rituals, Stapley pays most attention to the coverage of healing rituals in Lindman's work, and finds some issues with some of the details provided there.

Meanwhile, and leaving the world of scholarship for the world of propaganda, for those following the Texas schoolbook controversy which we briefly covered last summer (in which various propagandists are trying to do to history what the creationists would like to do to science education), the Austin Statesman has a piece filling you in on the latest. Our contributor John Fea (who is quoted in the Austin Statesman, and is writing a primer on this subject which promises to be required reading) comments on the piece here, and Jon Rowe comments cogently here. John apologizes for saying (inadvertently and without remembering it later) that Peter Marshall et al are "out to lunch," but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it ain't an ad hominem argument to suggest that it is a duck. The record of Marshall's public statements in particular (most recently about Katrina) suggests that ridicule is a perfectly legitimate response when a public figure makes ridiculous statements, but nonetheless exercises undue influence on important matters of history education.

"Why This Life?"

Know Your Editor: Susan Ferber, Executive Editor, American and World History, Oxford University Press

Randall Stephens

I liked it when the AHA met in NYC last year. Better yet, this year it’s in sunny San Diego, a nice break from the cold, snow, slush, and raging swine flu of New England. (And I forgot to bring my wetsuit.)

I spent part of Thursday reconnoitering the area and meeting with various friends in the profession. I also

had a chance to sit down with Susan Ferber, executive editor, Oxford University Press, and pose a few questions about publishing.

In the video embedded here I ask her about what she looks for in a proposal and what she thinks about the recent boom in religious history. (Paul blogged about that here.) I also ask her about the matter of converting a dissertation into a book. I was reminded of a piece that appeared in the Chronicle nearly two years ago: “Goodbye to All That” by Rachel Toor. A former editor, Toor summed up a meeting she had with a friend who wondered how her dissertation would fare when submitted to a press:

Wanting to be helpful, and, since I was no longer an editor constantly on the prowl for potentially promising manuscripts, I gave her my honest opinion: Who would be interested in a book like this?

I pointed out that, even in the way she described it to me, she was using coded language, jargon that would be a big flashing red light to warn off anyone outside of her particular academic discipline. What publisher, I asked, was going to want a book on a topic unknown to most people, especially if there was no underlying argument or theoretical framework?

Ultimately, what I wondered was whether anything in the dissertation was worth turning into a book.

I'm not always the most fun lunch date.

True enough. Ferber’s remarks, by contrast, are positively cheerful. So take heart, your dissertation may have a ready audience as a book. Just think carefully about readership and how best to frame your argument.

Christianity, Crashes, and Special Experiences

Paul Harvey

Good stuff over at Immanent Frame:

First, a little follow-up on Darren's post from yesterday: "Christianity and the Crash," collects a number of scholarly responses to Hanna Rosin's article "Did Christianity Cause the Crash," from the December 2009 Atlantic. Our friends Anthea Butler and Jon Walton weigh in, along with Mark Taylor, Harvey Cox, and several others. Most point to the longevity and durability of the "prosperity gospel," and explore the issue in deeper ways than is possible in a magazine piece. I like Jon Walton's take:

To assert the relationship as causal, as several articles have, grants way too much credit to a motley crew of preachers while shifting our attention away from destructive governmental deregulatory policies and the pernicious speculatory financial practices of Wall Street. The financial sophistication of most of the prosperity preachers still remains at the level of how to collect more crumbled dollar bills in the bucket on Sunday. And, like most Americans, I am pretty sure Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar have little understanding of a derivative bubble or the implications of repealing the Glass Steagall Act. . . . . It seems there is plenty of blame to go around here. And I would prefer to start at the top and not the bottom.

The Study of Special Experiences: An Interview with Ann Taves, Nathan Schneider's interview with AAR President Ann Taves, explores the intersections in Taves's work between "religion" and "experience," and more broadly between the humanistic study of religion and the biological study of human experience. A brief excerpt:

NS: Why do you begin with the category of experience?

AT: For much of the twentieth century, scholars of religion considered “religious experience” central to the study of religion. In the last 20 years or so that approach came in for sharp criticism. Many scholars wanted to get away from it because it seemed to suggest an experiential essence of religion and turned instead to analyzing discourses about experience. But I don’t think we can afford to throw experience out, because embodied experience is where culture and biology meet.

NS: How can experience be resuscitated?

AT: I argue for a few basic moves. First of all, we have to take religious experience apart, to disaggregate it. Rather than “religious experience,” we can talk about “experiences deemed religious.” This better takes into account the process of how we make sense of experience—as religious or not—at many different levels, not all of them conscious. Next, I locate experience under the broader heading of consciousness studies, ranging from highly reflective, self-aware meta-consciousness to unconscious processes. Once we can put experience in that kind of framework, it is possible to look at the interpretive processes, or what I call attributional processes, to understand how certain kinds of experiences in certain kinds of contexts come to be understood as religious. I also explore what it means to ascribe or attribute religiousness to an experience across cultures and times, even in contexts where people aren’t using the word “religion” or some obviously related term to describe their experience.

Window

 

You will probably have noticed that I keep a fairly up-to-date list of what I read on the side of the blog. Why? No reason, other than you might want to know just what makes me write the things I do.

In response to a suggestion from another blog, I thought I would expand on this concept just a bit. If you have no interest, feel free to scroll down.

In addition to what I'm reading...

What I'm Watching:

Not much, having made a serious effort to eliminate television, but I have secured the means (finally) to receive a digital signal. As such, I am ashamed to say I have begun to watch a bit. Mostly NFL football, as we head to playoff season. The trick is to anticipate the beer/softcore porn commercials to avoid seeing the whole reason I ditched TV in the first place.

Other than that, some A-Team reruns on RTV, On the Road Again Spain with Mario Batali, and Mythbusters via Netflix. Now that's living the life!

What I'm Listening to:

Aimee Mann, Aimee Mann and more Aimee Mann, mostly in the car. My children have developed an allergic rash from this. Also some Rebecca Pidgeon, which makes the children beg for Aimee Mann. Oh, and Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor, thanks to Sharon. Finally, fitting to the season, Christmas music courtesy of the Chieftains, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole and, um, Aimee Mann.

What I'm Playing:

Age of Empires III, The War Chiefs, for Mac. And basketball, thanks to my forced coaching gig.

What I'm Drinking:

Red Stripe and Chartreuse-- but not at the same time. And 200 fl. oz. of diet cola per day. Do I have a problem?

Traditional Personality Type:

Choleric (really, Sanguine-Choleric), but you can call it ENTP if you want.

Favorite Saints:

The Mother of God first and foremost, but that might be a cop-out. Otherwise, St. Francis de Sales, St. Edmund Campion, St. Louis, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas More, St. Jane Francis Fremiot de Chantal, St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, St. Pius V, St. Gemma Galgani, and Blessed Columba Marmion.

Now you know. But it could change tomorrow.

P.S. Aimee Mann painted that portrait of U.S. Grant for some reason. Really.

Today's Entries from the PC Dictionary

Perhaps I'll make this a recurring feature, but let's start with entry one:

anger: n. 1. the only possible emotion one can have when disagreeing with a liberal.

OK, a bonus entry:

hate: n. 1. disagreeing with a liberal; 2. Christianity per se; 3. obs. employing logic in an intellectual argument.

Twist my arm, one more:

tolerance: n. 1. the intolerance of Christian faith and principles in every aspect of human life; 2. the act of calling the truth a lie.

Responding Religiously to the Great Recession

Darren Grem

Jim Wallis has a new book coming out soon on what he sees as the religious underpinnings and implications of the recent--and continuing--recession. As what I suppose is a boilerplate for that book, Wallis recently wrote this column for the Washington Post, offering a "religious response to the financial crisis." A selection:

Clearly, the financial crisis is a structural meltdown that calls for increased government regulation of banks and other financial players. Members of faith communities, such as those who joined me in front of the Treasury building, are helping to push for this sort of reform. But at its core, this is also a spiritual crisis. More and more people are coming to understand that underlying the economic crisis is a values crisis, and that any economic recovery must be accompanied by a moral recovery. We have been asking the wrong question: When will the financial crisis end? The right question is: How will it change us? This could be a moment to reexamine the ways we measure success, do business and live our lives; a time to renew spiritual values and practices such as simplicity, patience, modesty, family, friendship, rest and Sabbath.

It seems that any time Wallis writes a column, the volleys begin almost immediately. The American Enterprise Institute did not disappoint:

After reading his opinion piece in the Washington Post, however, I’m a bit baffled. What exactly does Wallis mean by a “religious response”? To be substantive, it should offer some added theological value not available elsewhere. And to be useful, any response must first understand the crisis itself. It shouldn’t just add biblical stories, phrases, or paraphernalia to common myths and misunderstandings of the crisis.

There's some more back-and-forth's on this matter available at your local Google.

Why Stop There?

The New York Times has a story about how the U.S. is adding unmanned flying drones to its arsenal to conduct surveillance over coastal areas-- they already patrol in U.S. territory near the border areas in the Southwest. These are the same unmanned aircraft our government has sent to far corners of the world to kill unsuspecting people who have been identified as enemies. But these drones, we are assured, don't have weapons. And why wouldn't we believe that?

But why stop there? These drones are very quiet and extremely difficult to detect from the ground. We know that they are capable of launching lethal strikes from the air with no threat to any U.S. personnel. They are quite useful.

As Charles Featherstone says:

I can imagine how useful it would be to assign a Predator to cruise the air above I-10 through, say, Ontario, noting the license plates of speeders. Or the southside of Chicago, on the lookout for gang bangers and other ne’er-do-wells?

And why stop with merely taking pictures and issuing citations? I can imagine all sorts of uses for Hellfire missiles in a law enforcement context. A quick end to car chases! Get the bad guys where they are holed up! Enforce drunk driving checkpoints! Protect the wonderful men and women in blue as they sacrifice their lives in service for our freedom and security!

Just don’t be ungrateful. Because they know where you live. And if precision weapons work in Gaza and Iraq, why not in Chicago or San Bernardino?

_____________________

But this is all crazy talk. This could never happen. Don't worry about it-- The Biggest Loser premieres tonight! And NFL Playoffs this weekend!

Go Iowa!

Iowa flirting with No Permit Needed Concealed Carry

In the middle of America, you wouldn't expect it to be so difficult to get a concealed carry permit. But in Iowa, it is -- especially if the local sheriff doesn't like you.

That's why I'm glad to introduce you to a great new organization fighting on this issue. Iowa Gun Owners has been pushing for a major reform of Iowa's "Might Issue" concealed carry laws.

Not since Alaska (in 2003) has a state passed a no-permit-needed concealed carry law, enacting real carry freedom for law-abiding gun owners.

Iowa Gun Owners burst on to the scene in their rural state because for too long nothing had been done about their atrocious gun laws.

Compared to most of the smaller states, Iowa has some of the worst firearms laws in America, and no one in power seemed to care (though local gun owners have wanted change for years).

But in early 2009, State Rep. Kent Sorenson (R-Indianola) sponsored a bill to end the demand that Iowans beg permission to carry concealed.

And Iowa Gun Owners took action.

Surprising pundits throughout the state, Iowa Gun Owners brought Sorensen's bill within 1 vote of passing their State House.

Now, in an effort to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the institutional gun lobby has offered a "compromise." To many, that comes as no surprise, but it will spell defeat for any real concealed carry reform in Iowa.

Why would I write every gun owner in America for help on this issue?

First, Iowa is truly a pivotal state. Its early Straw Poll and Caucuses make it our nation's most watched political barometer.

Second, rarely does the chance come to pass historic legislation like this.

Every freedom lover in America should be excited about the possibility.

It's not just about one more "Shall Issue" state, but rather it's about Iowa becoming a bellwether for liberty in the very heart of our nation.

I often hear "the Second Amendment is my permit to carry", and I couldn't agree more. What, after all, is the right to "bear arms", in a modern context, if it is not to carry concealed?

But those are just empty words if the law makes a mockery of the Constitution.

With that in mind, I encourage everyone who truly embraces the Second Amendment's right to "bear arms" without infringement to jump on board and help out Iowa Gun Owners.

Seriously, it's that important.

To carry the tools of self-defense in Vermont and Alaska, you don't have to undergo a background enema, be fingerprinted like a common criminal, pay for state-mandated firearms training or have your name and address end up on some list.

You don't have to beg for your God-given rights. That's what the Second Amendment REALLY means!

Unfortunately, some of the elitist gun owners in America -- the head-honchos of the institutional gun lobby -- have trouble understanding that. In many states, they even directly oppose Vermont-Alaska real concealed carry.

Their opposition to freedom is nothing but a self-serving "I've got mine" attitude, seasoned with a dash of "not EVERYONE should be able to carry a gun."

But let's examine that attitude: it means they don't really oppose gun control.

They just oppose gun control when it's imposed on them. Give them their own little tin-pot dictatorship, and they're happy to limit your freedom.

Understand that real concealed carry doesn't allow a criminal to carry concealed legally, since that criminal is already ineligible to possess a firearm in the first place. Enacting a Vermont-Alaska law simply affirms a God-given right, which is secured by the U.S. Constitution and all but 6 state constitutions.

While it's true that permitless carry does not provide a mechanism to carry across friendly state lines, it does remove the hoops-and-hurdles in the home state. If one is worried about reciprocity acquiring a permit will still be an option.

So what can you do to help?

Donate to Iowa Gun Owners with a one-time gift through NAGR's special Iowa Freedom! Donation Page. Or, if you prefer, donate directly to Iowa Gun Owners.

As a fledgling group run by a young man of the highest integrity, Iowa Gun Owners is an organization I fully endorse -- in fact, I believe it's so important to help Iowa Gun Owners that I've donated directly to them myself.

So join me in making a generous contribution today!

In Liberty,

Dudley Brown

Executive Director

National Association for Gun Rights

-----------------------------------

To help the National Association for Gun Rights grow, please forward this to a friend.

Endorsed by racist NAACP?

Re: Ron Paul endorsed by Stormfront Radio

Is that like the Halfrican-American Obama, the president usurper Obama, the fraud and foreigner, receiving endorsements from La Raza and the NAACP, as well as from Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright and other hateful black racists who hate the United States and claim to be "Afro-centric" and yet hypocritically remain here rather than return to Africa where they belong? Repatriation not reparations!

"I will say, then, that I AM NOT NOR HAVE EVER BEEN in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races---that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of  Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever FORBID the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race."

- Abraham Lincoln

Regardless, I voted for Chuck Baldwin.

Sign me...

A White Israelite (more than simply a White Nationalist - Alternative to UN),
David Ben-Ariel

Israeli oligarchy under German-Jesuit command

Dear Caroline Glick:

Why blame the Israeli media and Sharon when they're merely the tip of the iceberg?

Why do you wonder how Sharon, Barak, Netanyahu all keep "screwing up" when they're clearly CFR tools (as Barry Chamish and others have noted), and that Israel is an oligarchy under German-Jesuit command? It's all chaos and confusion by design. What will it take before you finally believe this plain truth?

For Zion's sake,
David Ben-Ariel

Benjamin Netanyahu: CFR Member
The hypocrisy of Benjamin Netanyahu's UN speech
EU to Conquer Anglo-Saxon-Celtics and Jews
Christian-Zionist Response to Shimon Peres' AIPAC speech
http://www.davidbenariel.org/

A Saint Louis Catholic Tribute to Global Warming

As exemplified by today's wind chill map of the United States (click to enlarge).

Well, He Is the King, After All

Kudos to one small municipality in Lithuania, whose aldermen passed a resolution publicly enthroning Christ as its King, an acknowledgment of reality not often seen in the modern world. I wonder which Alderman will submit such a bill in the City of Saint Louis?

Found on the Remnant site, from La Croix--with deplorable Google English translation:

VILNIUS, December 29, 2009 (AFP) - Jesus Christ is "king" of a municipality in Lithuania

The aldermen of a small city in Lithuania, a country with strong Catholic majorities, had "enthroned Jesus Christ as King" to their community, hoping to pump up the morale of the population this time of economic crisis.

"Enthrone Jesus Christ as King of our municipality, solemnly declare that he is our sovereign and protector," said Mayor Salcininkai (southeast), Zdzislav Palevic, quoted by Baltic news agency BNS .

"During this difficult period for the country when the crisis affects the world, the role of Christ becomes important not only in the personal lives of people, but also in political and cultural life," proclaims the act of induction adopted unanimously.

"This is not a decision that could hurt. The area is very Catholic, and if it can encourage people to respect the Ten Commandments, why not?", Told AFP by telephone Leonarda Stancikiene, l 'one of 25 council members.

This town of about 7,000 people, mostly ethnic Poles, is located about fifty kilometers south of Vilnius, which was the first Lithuanian city to have entrusted his fate to Jesus Christ.

In an act approved June 12th last, the Vilnius region was placed under the protection of Christ "to avoid painful mistakes, dangers and threats".

Lithuania, a former Soviet republic became independent in 1990 and member of the EU in 2004, is a secular state, but the Catholic religion remains a vital component of the country.

Not That He Needs My Endorsement...

But I wanted to say publicly how much I enjoy Patrick Madrid's blog. There are a lot of Catholic blogs with an obvious theme; there are a lot of Catholic blogs that scour the news and make it more widely known, with commentary; and there are a lot of Catholic blogs that simply stand as a daily journal of the writer's thoughts.

This blog, for instance, is a mix, as is Mr. Madrid's. It's just that I think he does it exceptionally well. His insight, when offered, is instructive. His choice of news to highlight is well-selected. His humor posts are actually funny.

I like the blog, in other words. It is an effort outside his more official apologetics ministry that allows him to follow the tangents of the day.

I actually met Mr. Madrid at St. Francis de Sales Oratory after a weekday Mass in 2007 (or 2008-- I'm getting old). It was nice to see him there. Rosalind Moss (before taking the veil and moving to St. Louis) had just been there a few weeks earlier, and I figured that if I saw Karl Keating or Jimmy Akin turn up it was a sign that the parousia wasn't far off. In any event, Patrick Madrid was one of the mainstream, "conservative" Catholic apologists of the Catholic Answers variety whose work I admired for its intellectual as well as biblically-supported heft.

Back when I posted the scholarly article by UCLX for the proposition that head coverings for women in Church are still obligatory under canon law, Patrick Madrid covered it on his blog, and admitted its persuasiveness. That was morally courageous, I believe, because I think there is zero mileage in fronting for the mandatory nature of veiling in Catholic apologetics circles. He didn't duck the issue by chalking it up to a crazy "trad" thing, and I appreciated it.

So, if you haven't read that site, I encourage you to do so. You might spike his stats with seven more readers a day.

In Other News, America Bans Baseball

From the Independent:

Catalonia Votes to Ban Bullfighting

Bullfighting is, as Hemingway wrote, an event the effect of which on any particular person is impossible to predict ahead of time. I found it to be extremely compelling, and even beautiful. The difference in power, speed and vitality in the bull between when it bursts into the ring and when it calmly seems to seek its own death is indescribable. Catalonia (Catalunya in the regional dialect) has been on an anti-Spanish tirade since before the civil war. Even so, the banning of the national sport-- a cultural icon and heritage-- is remarkable. And sad. One more log on the P.C. pyre of the West.

Noah at Great Uncle David's

Moses at Christmas

Moses at Christmas
by Ed Blum
 

I tried to ruin the blockbuster film Avatar. Not for everyone, mind you, just for my new brother-in-law, David. "Jen and I just got out of Avatar," I texted falsely. "Can you believe the Jackneff … is that how you spell it? … destroyed the village at the end. Jen figured out way early that Halpha was a traitor." I hadn't seen Avatar. There's no Jackneff; no Halpha. It was my brilliant way of tricking and hopefully irritating David, an animator who had been Facebooking about his excitement for Avatar for weeks.

"Bro, haven't seen it yet," David texted back immediately, "Not cool." I laughed and laughed. He fell for it. I called and explained that I was teasing and that I hadn't seen the movie. David mustn't have been too upset with me (or perhaps he had already purchased my Christmas present), for in my stocking he placed America's Prophet: Moses and the American Story by Bruce Feiler. I had seen the book at Barnes and Noble and determined to get it at the library. Instead, I had my own Christmas copy. Flying home from the east coast, all hopped up on Bayer because of my sprained ankle, I had my dose of religious history to read.

Feiler's work passed the time well. It's a quirky, but fun, book.

Pitched to a general readership, I can only imagine scholars enjoying it. Feiler oscillates between historical analyses of Moses at various moments in American history to Feiler's personal experiences or interviews. So he jumps from Puritan sermons to his observations of Pilgrim reenactors, or from the words of the Founding Fathers to what the Liberty Bell sounds like to him. I had a great time venturing with Feiler to Cincinnati where he raced across the frozen Ohio River at midnight as if he was fleeing from slavery. But sometimes the personal anecdotes seem ridiculous. There's no one chasing him through the streets; the drama is fake and the reader knows it (just as it is in Dan Brown's disappointing The Lost Symbol). Feiler is probably at his best when interacting with director Cecil DeMille's descendants and piecing together the personal and social origins of his 1950s epic The Ten Commandments.

Feiler concludes that Moses taught American's a series of lessons. He taught them to have the courage to hope and rebel (in Exodus liberation style) and how to consolidate as a community (in law-giving and law-abiding style). He taught Americans how to form identities in difficult times (like massive immigration moments), how to fight the Nazis and Commies (with superheros and Charlton Heston), and how to deal with devastation (by accepting that sometimes you don't make it to the Promised Land).

And finally, Feiler proclaims that more than any other figure, Moses is the man - even more than Jesus. "Moses was more important to the Puritans, more meaningful to the Revolution, more impactful during the Civil War, and more inspiring to the immigrant rights, civil rights, and women's rights movements of the last century than Jesus," Feiler shouts. "Beyond that, Moses had more influence on American history than any other figure from the Bible or antiquity."

These are bold words. In modern America, it takes a lot of guts to challenge Jesus. Sure, two thousand years ago you could get away with arresting him or crucifying him pretty easily. But throughout American history, as Stephen Prothero and Richard Fox have shown brilliantly, Jesus has been a force. Prothero even suggests that the United States can best be understood not as a "Christian nation" or as a "pluralistic nation" but as a "Jesus nation." Now we have a challenge: Moses or Jesus. Historians, marshal your evidence and make your choice.

I'm not sure why Feiler insists on comparing Moses to Jesus in American historical influence. Perhaps it's his way of divesting American history of some of its overly Christian emphasis (like how some of my colleagues have quietly balked at Prothero's claim about the ubiquity of adoration for Jesus in American culture, explaining "I'd never put this in print, but I have always hated Christmas. You can't say that, though."). Do we need some statistician to quantify the number of books on Jesus and Moses in the Library of Congress or how many paintings there are of each one or of how many times members of Congress have referenced either one? Do we need to compare the box-office numbers of The Ten Commandments with those of Passion of the Christ? Do we need "Touchdown Jesus" to square off with Charlton Heston in a cage match?

It may be better to think of Moses and Jesus as tag-team partners in American history than separate entities. I'm guessing that the folks who want huge blocks of the decalogue inside and outside of courthouses tend to be the people who pray to Jesus. But I'm probably being too harsh. We historians are often found debating whether economic or political or cultural or religious forces were the most important in an era, as if any of these can neatly be separated. So perhaps we have Feiler to thank for a new scholarly discussion - which biblical character was the most important in American history - when, where, how, to whom? Regardless, thanks for the great present David.

Religion and Rethinking the "Unthinking Decision"

Paul Harvey

The holiday season; no better time to catch up on piled-up volumes of journals (if only to scan and put them back on the pile to read later, like next year at this time). But I did belatedly get to this piece, which I recommend to all for a concise state of the art article: Rebecca Goetz, “Rethinking the ‘Unthinking Decision’: Old Questions and New Problems in the History of Slavery and Race in the Colonial South,” Journal of Southern History LXXV (August 2009): 599-612. The bulk of the piece covers recent scholarship in the colonial-era South, concluding that “slavery became entrenched much earlier than we have previously supposed,” and that “even inchoate ideas of race -- racial idiom--seemingly emerged earlier than we have thought and apparently did not require either institutionalized slavery or the Enlightenment to attain their full articulation.” A brief part at the end explores the interaction of religion with slavery and race in the early South, and Goetz’s ideas here shed fresh light on the question:

Using religion as a category of analysis in the construction of race and slavery could have interesting implications for both aspects of the origins debate. Far from making an ‘unthinking decision’ to adopt the concept of race, Europeans clearly spent a great deal of time thinking about race and human variety. . . whatever role religion played in making race, it is also clear that by the early nineteenth century, religion was beginning to play a dual role in both justifying slavery and condemning it. The patterns of proslavery Christianity and abolitionist Christianity that are so familiar to scholars of the antebellum South have their origins in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In looking at early literature about key passages of Genesis, Goetz finds that “in debates over the construction of Noachic genealogies, Europeans began to define human difference as sanctioned by scripture, even as the Bible seemed also to point to the common ancestry” of Europeans, Indians and Africans.

Goetz calls for more exploration of the colonial era interaction of religion with the developing concept of race, especially how "Christian belief and biblical exegesis simultaneously resisted and reinforced the emergence of race." Colin Kidd's book The Forging of Races emphasizes the "resisted" part, while Goetz's dissertation and forthcoming book stresses the "reinforced" part. At any rate, seventeenth-century folk, it would appear, were far more self-conscious in thinking through the "unthinking decision" than we have thought.

Circumcision of Christ

Today is an important feast of the Church--now oft neglected and misunderstood. This feast marks the first day the Redeemer shed his blood for our salvation.

Today is also a Holy Day of Obligation.

I Have to Say This

The first decade of the twenty-first century did not end at midnight today.

The fact that few know this, and that even fewer care about this, is instructive when analyzing voting patterns.

Happy New Year!