ABSTRACT In the early nineteenth century, the “cosmological revolution” reached Americans with no special education or astronomical expertise. New ideas about the scale and nature of the cosmos, some of which had been gestating among elites for centuries, forced ordinary people to reevaluate traditional associations between higher places, higher beings, and higher meaning. As the old “heavens” became more like the modern “space”—larger, emptier, less morally alive—God and his kingdom became more abstract. This trend often mattered to people in ways that esoteric doctrine did not. It divided Americans. A placeless God and “state of being” afterlife found readier acceptance among educated people accustomed to thinking in abstract, immaterial terms and pursuing abstract, immaterial goods. Among nonintellectuals, the new heavens caused unsettling debates between people, and within them, about the locality and reality of higher things. Well before better-remembered disputes over Darwinism and geology, these cosmological debates opened foundational divisions in popular ideas, as some laypeople reluctantly accommodated the new heavens while others turned to defiant cosmic conservatism. On balance, Americans moved toward reformed conceptions of God and heaven, rebuilding divinity in the image of the new cosmos.
{"title":"Sky God: Remaking the Heavens and Divinity in the Nineteenth-Century United States","authors":"Trent MacNamara","doi":"10.1017/rac.2022.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rac.2022.2","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the early nineteenth century, the “cosmological revolution” reached Americans with no special education or astronomical expertise. New ideas about the scale and nature of the cosmos, some of which had been gestating among elites for centuries, forced ordinary people to reevaluate traditional associations between higher places, higher beings, and higher meaning. As the old “heavens” became more like the modern “space”—larger, emptier, less morally alive—God and his kingdom became more abstract. This trend often mattered to people in ways that esoteric doctrine did not. It divided Americans. A placeless God and “state of being” afterlife found readier acceptance among educated people accustomed to thinking in abstract, immaterial terms and pursuing abstract, immaterial goods. Among nonintellectuals, the new heavens caused unsettling debates between people, and within them, about the locality and reality of higher things. Well before better-remembered disputes over Darwinism and geology, these cosmological debates opened foundational divisions in popular ideas, as some laypeople reluctantly accommodated the new heavens while others turned to defiant cosmic conservatism. On balance, Americans moved toward reformed conceptions of God and heaven, rebuilding divinity in the image of the new cosmos.","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":"32 1","pages":"30 - 67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57087113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSRACT This essay relies on American and newly available Vatican archival sources to reconstruct the ins and outs of the U.S. Catholic Church's involvement in First Amendment litigation between the 1940s and the 1960s. These reveal how Catholic leaders, far from urging the demise of the de facto Protestant establishment, cooperated with Protestants to protect it from legal challenges. They did so not because gaining the acceptance of their non-Catholic neighbors was their paramount concern, nor because American Catholics were more “liberal” than their Roman counterparts. Rather, they saw the “Nation under God” as effectively addressing traditional Catholic critiques of the liberal principle of church-state separation—and therefore a project worthy of their commitment. Ironically, while pursuing goals fully compatible with Roman orthodoxy, they found themselves allied with evangelist Billy Graham and Gideons International long before the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and Roe v. Wade (1973).
{"title":"Defending the Nation Under God: Global Catholicism, the Supreme Court, and the Secularist Specter (1946–1963)","authors":"Susanna De Stradis","doi":"10.1017/rac.2022.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rac.2022.9","url":null,"abstract":"ABSRACT This essay relies on American and newly available Vatican archival sources to reconstruct the ins and outs of the U.S. Catholic Church's involvement in First Amendment litigation between the 1940s and the 1960s. These reveal how Catholic leaders, far from urging the demise of the de facto Protestant establishment, cooperated with Protestants to protect it from legal challenges. They did so not because gaining the acceptance of their non-Catholic neighbors was their paramount concern, nor because American Catholics were more “liberal” than their Roman counterparts. Rather, they saw the “Nation under God” as effectively addressing traditional Catholic critiques of the liberal principle of church-state separation—and therefore a project worthy of their commitment. Ironically, while pursuing goals fully compatible with Roman orthodoxy, they found themselves allied with evangelist Billy Graham and Gideons International long before the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and Roe v. Wade (1973).","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":"32 1","pages":"267 - 303"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57087526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"RAC volume 32 issue 2 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/rac.2022.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rac.2022.10","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":"32 1","pages":"f1 - f4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57086937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"RAC volume 32 issue 1 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/rac.2022.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rac.2022.5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":"32 1","pages":"f1 - f4"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57087140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"RAC volume 32 issue 2 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/rac.2022.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rac.2022.11","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":"32 1","pages":"b1 - b1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57086987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"RAC volume 32 issue 1 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/rac.2022.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rac.2022.6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":"32 1","pages":"b1 - b1"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57087443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT At the turn of the twentieth century, Christian Scientists contended with ongoing allegations that their faith was more of a mental pathology than a religion. This article analyzes how the Church of Christ, Scientist, in particular its public relations branch the Committee on Publication, systematically contended with popular portrayals of Christian Science as a source or indicator of insanity. Two highly profiled court cases, both predicated on the purported insanity of a Christian Science woman and her attendant inability to manage her business affairs, are explored for their cultural effect on the promotion of the causal association between Christian Science and madness. This study employs newspaper clippings collected and archived by the Church's Committee on Publication as well as court records to argue for the salience of the insanity charge in shaping the early history of Christian Science and its public perception. As a religious tradition premised on divine healing and health, popular psychopathological interpretations of Christian Science were particularly subversive and functioned not only to discredit and undermine the religion's claims to healing but to forward societal fears that Christian Science study posed a unique threat to women's health. This examination draws attention to a dynamic historical exchange between the press and a new religious movement, as well as the polyvalent gendered presumptions embedded in popular charges of insanity in association with religion.
{"title":"‘Driven Insane by Eddyism’: Christian Science, Popular Psychopathology, and a Turn-of-the-Century Contest over Faith and Madness","authors":"A. Prince","doi":"10.1017/rac.2021.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rac.2021.17","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT At the turn of the twentieth century, Christian Scientists contended with ongoing allegations that their faith was more of a mental pathology than a religion. This article analyzes how the Church of Christ, Scientist, in particular its public relations branch the Committee on Publication, systematically contended with popular portrayals of Christian Science as a source or indicator of insanity. Two highly profiled court cases, both predicated on the purported insanity of a Christian Science woman and her attendant inability to manage her business affairs, are explored for their cultural effect on the promotion of the causal association between Christian Science and madness. This study employs newspaper clippings collected and archived by the Church's Committee on Publication as well as court records to argue for the salience of the insanity charge in shaping the early history of Christian Science and its public perception. As a religious tradition premised on divine healing and health, popular psychopathological interpretations of Christian Science were particularly subversive and functioned not only to discredit and undermine the religion's claims to healing but to forward societal fears that Christian Science study posed a unique threat to women's health. This examination draws attention to a dynamic historical exchange between the press and a new religious movement, as well as the polyvalent gendered presumptions embedded in popular charges of insanity in association with religion.","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":"31 1","pages":"379 - 418"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46461025","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT This article traces the life of a single figure, Sufi Abdul Hamid, to bring into conversation the history of the transmission of Buddhism to the United States with the emergence of new Black religio-racial movements in the early twentieth century. It follows Hamid's activities in the 1930s to ask what Hamid's life reveals about the relationship between Buddhism and race in the United States. On the one hand, Hamid's own negotiation of his identity as a Black Orientalist illustrates the contentious process through which individuals negotiate their religio-racial identities in tension with hegemonic religio-racial frameworks. Hamid constructed a Black Orientalist identity that resignified Blackness while criticizing the racial injustice foundational to the American nation-state. His Black Orientalist identity at times resonated with global Orientalist discourses, even while being recalcitrant to the hegemonic religio-racial frameworks of white Orientalism. The subversive positioning of Hamid's Black Orientalist identity simultaneously lent itself to his racialization by others. This is illustrated through Hamid's posthumous implication in a conspiracy theory known as the “Black Buddhism Plan.” This theory drew on imaginations of a Black Pacific community formulated by both Black Americans and by government authorities who created Japanese Buddhists and new Black religio-racial movements as subjects of surveillance. The capacious nature of Hamid's religio-racial identity, on the one hand constructed and performed by Hamid himself, and on the other created in the shadow of the dominant discourses of a white racial state, demonstrates that Buddhism in the United States is always constituted by race.
本文追溯了一个人物——苏菲·阿卜杜勒·哈米德(Sufi Abdul Hamid)的一生，以探讨佛教在20世纪初随着新的黑人宗教种族运动的出现而传入美国的历史。它跟随哈米德在20世纪30年代的活动，询问哈米德的生活揭示了佛教与美国种族之间的关系。一方面，哈米德自己作为黑人东方主义者的身份谈判说明了个人在与霸权的宗教-种族框架的紧张关系中谈判其宗教-种族身份的争议过程。哈米德在批判美国民族国家基础上的种族不公正的同时，建构了一种放弃黑人身份的黑人东方主义身份。他的黑人东方学身份有时与全球东方学话语产生共鸣，即使他反对白人东方学的宗教-种族霸权框架。哈米德的黑人东方主义身份的颠覆性定位同时也使他被他人种族化。哈米德死后在一个被称为“黑佛教计划”的阴谋论中暗示了这一点。这一理论借鉴了美国黑人和政府当局对太平洋黑人社区的想象，政府当局将日本佛教徒和新的黑人宗教种族运动作为监视对象。哈米德的宗教-种族身份的宽广本质，一方面是由哈米德本人建构和演绎的，另一方面是在白人种族国家的主导话语的阴影下创造的，这表明美国的佛教始终是由种族构成的。
{"title":"The “Black Buddhism Plan”: Buddhism, Race, and Empire in the Early Twentieth Century","authors":"A. McNicholl","doi":"10.1017/rac.2021.16","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rac.2021.16","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article traces the life of a single figure, Sufi Abdul Hamid, to bring into conversation the history of the transmission of Buddhism to the United States with the emergence of new Black religio-racial movements in the early twentieth century. It follows Hamid's activities in the 1930s to ask what Hamid's life reveals about the relationship between Buddhism and race in the United States. On the one hand, Hamid's own negotiation of his identity as a Black Orientalist illustrates the contentious process through which individuals negotiate their religio-racial identities in tension with hegemonic religio-racial frameworks. Hamid constructed a Black Orientalist identity that resignified Blackness while criticizing the racial injustice foundational to the American nation-state. His Black Orientalist identity at times resonated with global Orientalist discourses, even while being recalcitrant to the hegemonic religio-racial frameworks of white Orientalism. The subversive positioning of Hamid's Black Orientalist identity simultaneously lent itself to his racialization by others. This is illustrated through Hamid's posthumous implication in a conspiracy theory known as the “Black Buddhism Plan.” This theory drew on imaginations of a Black Pacific community formulated by both Black Americans and by government authorities who created Japanese Buddhists and new Black religio-racial movements as subjects of surveillance. The capacious nature of Hamid's religio-racial identity, on the one hand constructed and performed by Hamid himself, and on the other created in the shadow of the dominant discourses of a white racial state, demonstrates that Buddhism in the United States is always constituted by race.","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":"31 1","pages":"332 - 378"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45016821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT Contemporary yogis, evangelical Christians, and witches have incorporated essential oils and their aromas into practices as diverse as yoga, meditation, prayer, Bible reading, anointing, and spellcasting in the United States over the past forty years. These groups often view each other with alarm, yet they tread common ground in utilizing essential oils to intensify varied spiritual practices. This article answers two related questions. How do spiritually diverse practitioners justify using the same consumer products to amplify their practices, and why are essential oils considered sacred by these same consumers? Drawing from a diverse archive of essential oil use guides, marketing materials, and social media posts, I argue that spiritual “oilers” are (1) perennialists who mythologize ancient uses of scent to authenticate their postmodern embodied practices, and (2) essentialists who believe that essential oils contain universal, transcendent properties. Consequently, oilers’ beliefs and practices blur classifications between traditions and sharpen our attention to the importance of the sense of smell in contemporary spirituality. This project contributes to studies of spirituality and consumerism by offering a comparative analysis of how three groups use smell, via essential oils, to intensify their individual spiritual practices as well as their collective identities as oilers.
{"title":"Smelling Things: Essential Oils and Essentialism in Contemporary American Spirituality","authors":"Kira Ganga Kieffer","doi":"10.1017/rac.2021.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rac.2021.13","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Contemporary yogis, evangelical Christians, and witches have incorporated essential oils and their aromas into practices as diverse as yoga, meditation, prayer, Bible reading, anointing, and spellcasting in the United States over the past forty years. These groups often view each other with alarm, yet they tread common ground in utilizing essential oils to intensify varied spiritual practices. This article answers two related questions. How do spiritually diverse practitioners justify using the same consumer products to amplify their practices, and why are essential oils considered sacred by these same consumers? Drawing from a diverse archive of essential oil use guides, marketing materials, and social media posts, I argue that spiritual “oilers” are (1) perennialists who mythologize ancient uses of scent to authenticate their postmodern embodied practices, and (2) essentialists who believe that essential oils contain universal, transcendent properties. Consequently, oilers’ beliefs and practices blur classifications between traditions and sharpen our attention to the importance of the sense of smell in contemporary spirituality. This project contributes to studies of spirituality and consumerism by offering a comparative analysis of how three groups use smell, via essential oils, to intensify their individual spiritual practices as well as their collective identities as oilers.","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":"31 1","pages":"297 - 331"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57086469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT Over the course of the twentieth century, dozens of conservative Protestant ministers were accused of sexual deviance—including instances of same-sex acts and attractions. Protestant churches, in turn, experimented with employing various tactics to undermine and challenge such accusations. From silencing and secrecy to public censure and disassociation, denominational bodies labored to undermine evidence of queerness among their ministers. This essay surveys a one-hundred-year history of religious groups’ and institutions’ attempts at dealing with the uncomfortable but persistent allegations of not-quite-straightness among their leaders. This story accounts for how conservative Protestantism has been able to maintain its claims to a particular kind of sexual morality even as religious leaders themselves have repeatedly jeopardized this project.
{"title":"Queer Rumors: Protestant Ministers, Unnatural Deeds, and Church Censure in the Twentieth-Century United States","authors":"Suzanna Krivulskaya","doi":"10.1017/rac.2021.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/rac.2021.5","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Over the course of the twentieth century, dozens of conservative Protestant ministers were accused of sexual deviance—including instances of same-sex acts and attractions. Protestant churches, in turn, experimented with employing various tactics to undermine and challenge such accusations. From silencing and secrecy to public censure and disassociation, denominational bodies labored to undermine evidence of queerness among their ministers. This essay surveys a one-hundred-year history of religious groups’ and institutions’ attempts at dealing with the uncomfortable but persistent allegations of not-quite-straightness among their leaders. This story accounts for how conservative Protestantism has been able to maintain its claims to a particular kind of sexual morality even as religious leaders themselves have repeatedly jeopardized this project.","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":"31 1","pages":"1 - 32"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/rac.2021.5","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"57086900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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