Pub Date : 2018-06-18DOI: 10.1525/rac.2018.28.2.238
E. Johnson
Abstract As a new cohort of religious conservatives became major players in U.S. political discourse during the 1970s and 1980s, they expressed ambivalence about the political realm and often represented their religious motivations as simultaneously separate from politics and as justification for their political activism. Prominent conservative evangelical women drew on this ambivalence in specifically gendered ways, referencing their religious commitments as well as their roles as mothers, which they asserted both compelled them to speak out on political issues, and proved that these issues were not fundamentally political. Building on scholarship about women’s grassroots support in conservative movements, this article underscores the importance of women’s national leadership in the New Christian Right. It focuses on the career of singerturned- activist Anita Bryant, who offers a particularly instructive example due to her public and explicit transformation from representative symbol of American motherhood to outspoken political activist in the late 1970s. Within the context of a flourishing evangelical subculture and shifting political landscape, Bryant’s negotiations of her political authority exemplify conservative evangelical women’s ways of understanding their leadership in support of a platform that emphasized women’s domestic roles. It demonstrates how they invoked an existing tension between religious and political identification to expand the ideology of “traditional gender roles” without overstepping its bounds. More broadly, Bryant’s career offers insight into the importance of women’s national leadership in framing the rhetoric and priorities of the New Christian Right, including its central emphases on gender and its relationship with contemporary feminist movements.
{"title":"God, Country, and Anita Bryant: Women’s Leadership and the Politics of the New Christian Right","authors":"E. Johnson","doi":"10.1525/rac.2018.28.2.238","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/rac.2018.28.2.238","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract As a new cohort of religious conservatives became major players in U.S. political discourse during the 1970s and 1980s, they expressed ambivalence about the political realm and often represented their religious motivations as simultaneously separate from politics and as justification for their political activism. Prominent conservative evangelical women drew on this ambivalence in specifically gendered ways, referencing their religious commitments as well as their roles as mothers, which they asserted both compelled them to speak out on political issues, and proved that these issues were not fundamentally political. Building on scholarship about women’s grassroots support in conservative movements, this article underscores the importance of women’s national leadership in the New Christian Right. It focuses on the career of singerturned- activist Anita Bryant, who offers a particularly instructive example due to her public and explicit transformation from representative symbol of American motherhood to outspoken political activist in the late 1970s. Within the context of a flourishing evangelical subculture and shifting political landscape, Bryant’s negotiations of her political authority exemplify conservative evangelical women’s ways of understanding their leadership in support of a platform that emphasized women’s domestic roles. It demonstrates how they invoked an existing tension between religious and political identification to expand the ideology of “traditional gender roles” without overstepping its bounds. More broadly, Bryant’s career offers insight into the importance of women’s national leadership in framing the rhetoric and priorities of the New Christian Right, including its central emphases on gender and its relationship with contemporary feminist movements.","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75303437","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}
Pub Date : 2018-06-18DOI: 10.1525/rac.2018.28.2.167
E. Fones-Wolf, K. Fones-wolf
Abstract From 1946 to 1950, East Tennessee was embroiled in a bitter campaign over the radio preacher and evangelist, J. Harold Smith. More than a curiosity, this confrontation helps us understand a much broader struggle that cut deeply through American society in the post-World War II era. It was a conflict that grew out of a conservative political effort to roll back the New Deal, the union-led regime of collective bargaining, and the tide of modernist religion. These issues overlapped with concerns about African-American equality and the Soviet Union’s threat to the nation’s security. Although recent scholarship has revealed the symbiotic relationship between postwar evangelicalism and free-enterprise ideology, we know little about how and why that message resonated for many middling and working-class individuals. Fortunately, supporters of Smith’s radio program wrote thousands of letters that illuminate what normally anonymous people were thinking about God, society, and politics in the postwar years. In this paper, we use the events in Knoxville as a window into the broader contest over religion and politics in postwar America. Smith’s struggle in Knoxville occurred during an especially tumultuous time in the South. As such, it reveals one regional context for the unsettling political changes and religious conflicts that were occurring nationally. Finally, a study of the responses of Smith’s supporters affords a rare opportunity to analyze one base of postwar fundamentalism and what drew them to the politics and theology of men like J. Harold Smith.
{"title":"“Termites in the Temple”: Fundamentalism and Anti-Liberal Politics in the Post–World War II South","authors":"E. Fones-Wolf, K. Fones-wolf","doi":"10.1525/rac.2018.28.2.167","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/rac.2018.28.2.167","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract From 1946 to 1950, East Tennessee was embroiled in a bitter campaign over the radio preacher and evangelist, J. Harold Smith. More than a curiosity, this confrontation helps us understand a much broader struggle that cut deeply through American society in the post-World War II era. It was a conflict that grew out of a conservative political effort to roll back the New Deal, the union-led regime of collective bargaining, and the tide of modernist religion. These issues overlapped with concerns about African-American equality and the Soviet Union’s threat to the nation’s security. Although recent scholarship has revealed the symbiotic relationship between postwar evangelicalism and free-enterprise ideology, we know little about how and why that message resonated for many middling and working-class individuals. Fortunately, supporters of Smith’s radio program wrote thousands of letters that illuminate what normally anonymous people were thinking about God, society, and politics in the postwar years. In this paper, we use the events in Knoxville as a window into the broader contest over religion and politics in postwar America. Smith’s struggle in Knoxville occurred during an especially tumultuous time in the South. As such, it reveals one regional context for the unsettling political changes and religious conflicts that were occurring nationally. Finally, a study of the responses of Smith’s supporters affords a rare opportunity to analyze one base of postwar fundamentalism and what drew them to the politics and theology of men like J. Harold Smith.","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89098595","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 explains how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) partnered with African American minister Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux to discredit and neutralize Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. The Elder, the nation's first minister (black or white) to have his own weekly television show, colluded with the Bureau to shape public opinion against King and cast doubt upon King's religious commitments and activities. Michaux was, what I call, a Bureau Clergyman: a minister who was an FBI “Special Service Contact” or on the Bureau's “Special Correspondents Lists.” Far from secret informants, black and white male clergy in these official Bureau programs enjoyed very public and cooperative relationships with the FBI and were occasionally “called into service” to work in concert with the FBI. The FBI called upon Michaux and he willingly used his status, popular media ministry, and cold war spirituality to publically scandalize King as a communist and defend the Bureau against King's criticisms. In the end, the Elder demonized King, contested calls for black equality under the law, and lionized the FBI as the keeper of Christian America. The story moves the field beyond the very well known narratives of the FBI's hostility towards religion and reveals how the Bureau publicly embraced religion and commissioned their clergymen to help maintain prevailing social arrangements. Michaux's relationship with the FBI also offers a window into the overlooked religious dimensions of the FBI's opposition to King, even as it highlights how black clergy articulated and followed competing ideologies of black liberation during the civil rights movement.
{"title":"Bureau Clergyman: How the FBI Colluded with an African American Televangelist to Destroy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.","authors":"Lerone A. Martin","doi":"10.1525/RAC.2018.28.1.1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/RAC.2018.28.1.1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explains how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) partnered with African American minister Elder Lightfoot Solomon Michaux to discredit and neutralize Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. The Elder, the nation's first minister (black or white) to have his own weekly television show, colluded with the Bureau to shape public opinion against King and cast doubt upon King's religious commitments and activities. Michaux was, what I call, a Bureau Clergyman: a minister who was an FBI “Special Service Contact” or on the Bureau's “Special Correspondents Lists.” Far from secret informants, black and white male clergy in these official Bureau programs enjoyed very public and cooperative relationships with the FBI and were occasionally “called into service” to work in concert with the FBI. The FBI called upon Michaux and he willingly used his status, popular media ministry, and cold war spirituality to publically scandalize King as a communist and defend the Bureau against King's criticisms. In the end, the Elder demonized King, contested calls for black equality under the law, and lionized the FBI as the keeper of Christian America. The story moves the field beyond the very well known narratives of the FBI's hostility towards religion and reveals how the Bureau publicly embraced religion and commissioned their clergymen to help maintain prevailing social arrangements. Michaux's relationship with the FBI also offers a window into the overlooked religious dimensions of the FBI's opposition to King, even as it highlights how black clergy articulated and followed competing ideologies of black liberation during the civil rights movement.","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75319820","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}
Pub Date : 2018-06-18DOI: 10.1017/s1052115100003822
{"title":"RAC volume 28 issue 1 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s1052115100003822","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1052115100003822","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90477327","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}
Pub Date : 2018-06-18DOI: 10.1525/RAC.2018.28.1.92
Michael Lienesch
Abstract Since the publication fifty years ago of Robert N. Bellah's classic article “Civil Religion in America,” the concept of civil religion has provoked continuing debates among scholars who study religion and American culture. This essay is a contribution to these debates and an attempt to move beyond them. It considers American civil religion as theory and as practice, examining its meaning through an investigation of how it functioned at an important and too little studied point in its past. Arguing that civil religion is both a cultural and a political construct, it shows how at the close of World War I, a loosely linked network of civic, military, and patriotic groups came together to create a sacralized form of patriotic nationalism and incorporate it into the American civil religious tradition. Contending that the relationships between civil religion and more conventional forms of organized religion are often close and at times contentious, it examines how religious bodies of the time were instrumental in supporting this process and intractable in resisting it. Proposing that civil religion can come in a variety of sometimes competing versions, it discusses the conflicts over civil religious practices that ensued within American churches during the next decade, relying on reports from the time to describe how these conflicts divided church leaders, denominations, and congregations. Finally, working from the premise that civil religious beliefs, symbols, and rituals are invariably involved in the political process, it examines how they became increasingly used for partisan purposes over the course of the decade, raising issues about the relationship between church and state. In closing, it comments on the enduring character of civil religion, and speculates on its continuing importance for American religion and politics.
{"title":"Contesting Civil Religion: Religious Responses to American Patriotic Nationalism, 1919-1929","authors":"Michael Lienesch","doi":"10.1525/RAC.2018.28.1.92","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/RAC.2018.28.1.92","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Since the publication fifty years ago of Robert N. Bellah's classic article “Civil Religion in America,” the concept of civil religion has provoked continuing debates among scholars who study religion and American culture. This essay is a contribution to these debates and an attempt to move beyond them. It considers American civil religion as theory and as practice, examining its meaning through an investigation of how it functioned at an important and too little studied point in its past. Arguing that civil religion is both a cultural and a political construct, it shows how at the close of World War I, a loosely linked network of civic, military, and patriotic groups came together to create a sacralized form of patriotic nationalism and incorporate it into the American civil religious tradition. Contending that the relationships between civil religion and more conventional forms of organized religion are often close and at times contentious, it examines how religious bodies of the time were instrumental in supporting this process and intractable in resisting it. Proposing that civil religion can come in a variety of sometimes competing versions, it discusses the conflicts over civil religious practices that ensued within American churches during the next decade, relying on reports from the time to describe how these conflicts divided church leaders, denominations, and congregations. Finally, working from the premise that civil religious beliefs, symbols, and rituals are invariably involved in the political process, it examines how they became increasingly used for partisan purposes over the course of the decade, raising issues about the relationship between church and state. In closing, it comments on the enduring character of civil religion, and speculates on its continuing importance for American religion and politics.","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85818354","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}
Pub Date : 2018-06-18DOI: 10.1017/s1052115100004189
{"title":"RAC volume 28 issue 2 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s1052115100004189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1052115100004189","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78091428","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}
Pub Date : 2018-06-18DOI: 10.1017/s1052115100003834
{"title":"RAC volume 28 issue 1 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s1052115100003834","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1052115100003834","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81260851","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}
Pub Date : 2018-06-18DOI: 10.1525/rac.2018.28.1.166
{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1525/rac.2018.28.1.166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/rac.2018.28.1.166","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85306162","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}
Pub Date : 2018-06-18DOI: 10.1525/rac.2018.28.2.206
Rachel S. A. Pear
Abstract While tension between religious commitment and evolution has often been perceived as a Christian American phenomenon, the current article joins a growing body of literature that illustrates how some Jewish Americans have also struggled with Darwinism. This article will focus in on the case of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists (AOJS), and document its members’ engagement with evolution in the 1960s and 70s. Although founded in New York in 1948, the AOJS did not grapple with the issue of evolution in its first decade. When evolution did come to the fore in the 1960s, a time when the Christian American discussion of evolution also escalated, AOJS members expressed a spectrum of views on the matter. Those who strongly critiqued evolution, however, were more prolific in their writing on the subject than those who expressed positive attitudes towards evolution. This article highlights historical and sociological factors within American and Jewish life in the second half of the 20th century that are related to this outburst of antievolutionism on the part of some AOJS members in this period. It further illustrates that the negative view of evolution promoted by some members was not suppressed or censured by the association, despite the fact that it may well have been a minority view within the group. Lastly the article suggests that the American Orthodox scientists adopted the model of agreeing to disagree on the matter of evolution because they placed the value of Orthodox Jewish unity above other scientific and social considerations and goals.
{"title":"Agreeing to Disagree: American Orthodox Jewish Scientists’ Confrontation with Evolution in the 1960s","authors":"Rachel S. A. Pear","doi":"10.1525/rac.2018.28.2.206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/rac.2018.28.2.206","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract While tension between religious commitment and evolution has often been perceived as a Christian American phenomenon, the current article joins a growing body of literature that illustrates how some Jewish Americans have also struggled with Darwinism. This article will focus in on the case of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists (AOJS), and document its members’ engagement with evolution in the 1960s and 70s. Although founded in New York in 1948, the AOJS did not grapple with the issue of evolution in its first decade. When evolution did come to the fore in the 1960s, a time when the Christian American discussion of evolution also escalated, AOJS members expressed a spectrum of views on the matter. Those who strongly critiqued evolution, however, were more prolific in their writing on the subject than those who expressed positive attitudes towards evolution. This article highlights historical and sociological factors within American and Jewish life in the second half of the 20th century that are related to this outburst of antievolutionism on the part of some AOJS members in this period. It further illustrates that the negative view of evolution promoted by some members was not suppressed or censured by the association, despite the fact that it may well have been a minority view within the group. Lastly the article suggests that the American Orthodox scientists adopted the model of agreeing to disagree on the matter of evolution because they placed the value of Orthodox Jewish unity above other scientific and social considerations and goals.","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84114602","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}
Pub Date : 2018-06-18DOI: 10.1017/s1052115100004177
{"title":"RAC volume 28 issue 2 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s1052115100004177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1052115100004177","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42977,"journal":{"name":"RELIGION AND AMERICAN CULTURE-A JOURNAL OF INTERPRETATION","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-06-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86821404","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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