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Assignment:
This exam asks you to think comparatively and synthetically about the wide range of materials we have covered this semester – theoretical, historical, etc. – in order to address over-arching issues in American political religions. The topics we have addressed so far include: law, gender and the body, sexuality, civic education, deliberation, and dissent, among others. A good answer will address most, if not all of these issues at some point.
The question is very open-ended; you must be creative, and demonstrate your fluency with course materials. You must address the question’s broad themes by referring to specific activists, movements, and ideas. Each theoretical concept can be explained using any number of examples, so I urge you to range across American religio-political history in your answers.
The format I’d like you to use is roughly similar to that of your first essay. Since this is a take-home exam, I expect you to write your answer in a way that involves more depth than an in-class exam. In other words, go back to your class notes and texts – use all of these materials as you craft your responses (any exam that doesn’t cite a number of texts we have read will indicate to me that a rush-job has been done). You don’t have to use full footnotes, but you must use citations and course concepts.
All exams must be 8-10 double-spaced pages long (13-15 for graduate students).
Question:
At the heart of this course is the idea that social change in American history is in many ways the product of tension between religious norms or practices and political ones. Historically, Americans have tended to think about these issues through the lens of party affiliation, denomination, or interest groups. As we saw in the first month of class particularly, the last half century has undermined the durability of this older habit of perception. In this essay, you are to describe and document these transformations.
a) In your understanding, what are some of the most significant periods of tension between religions and politics since the Revolutionary period. Keep in mind, as always, that religion means many different things, and no religious tradition is univocal.
b) What major political and religious transformations would you single out in the last 50 years or so? What developments in the 1960s and 70s specifically helped increase religious discontent with political order in America?
c) Describe how recent debates about rights, law, identity, community, and legitimate governance have transformed long-standing assumptions about both American politics and about religious obligations to transform the world.
d) Obviously, the major theme running throughout the course has been the aforementioned discontent in the contemporary United States. More and more religionists find themselves to be “citizens of two worlds”; growing numbers of the devout highlight what they perceive as a gap between their understanding of justice and the state’s. Choose one of the following three authors to interpret what you have documented in sections (a-c): Aho, Bellah, or Rawls.
Here are some texts (only references these texts, but not all of them have to be used in the essay):
Bruce Lincoln, “Theses on Method”: https://religion.ua.edu/links/theses-on-method/.
Malory Nye, “Whiteness, Religion, and Modernity”: https://medium.com/religion-bites/whiteness-religion-and-modernity-64729dc21e8e.
Peter Steinfels, “Globally, Religion Defies Easily Identified Patterns”: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/us/24beliefs.html.
Tobin Grant, “The Rise and Fall of Religiosity in the United States”: https://religionnews.com/2014/12/11/1940s-america-wasnt-religious-think-rise-fall-american-religion/.
Philip Jenkins, “Twelve Trends That Shaped U.S. Religion Since the 1970s”: https://ethicsdaily.com/12-trends-that-shaped-u-s-religion-since-the-70s-cms-23873/.
Carol Tucker, “The 1950s”: https://news.usc.edu/25835/The-1950s-Powerful-Years-for-Religion/.
Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to the Danbury Baptists”: https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html
James Madison, “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments”: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions43.html.
South African Constitution: http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng.pdf.
U.S. Constitution: https://www.congress.gov/constitution-annotated/.
George Washington, “Letter to Hebrew Congregation”: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-06-02-0135.
Robert Bellah, “Civil Religion in America”: http://www.robertbellah.com/articles_5.htm.
Sam Haselby, “American Secular”: https://aeon.co/essays/why-did-the-secular-ambitions-of-the-early-united-states-fail.
C. Wright Mills, “Mass Society and Liberal Education” in The Politics of Truth: https://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/NCSU4302324.
Michael Walzer, “The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism”: https://www.sss.ias.edu/files/pdfs/Walzer/CommunitarianCritiqueLiberalism.pdf.
James Aho, “Revisiting Authoritarianism,” via library: https://journals-sagepub-com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/doi/10.1177/0896920519830749.
John A. Andrew III, “The Origins of the New Right” via: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/the-other-side-of-the-sixties/9780813524016.
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, “How Democracies Die”: https://sites.unimi.it/carbone/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/How-democracies-die-Steven-Levitsky-Daniel-Ziblatt-The-Guardian-21-Jan.-2018.pdf.
The Port Huron Statement: http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/SDS_Port_Huron.html.
Part III: The State, Legal Authority, Patriotism & Dissent
Law and the Sources of Obligation 1
Kathryn Gin Lum and Lerone Martin, “American Religion and the Rise of Internal Security”: https://content.ucpress.edu/chapters/13018.ch01.pdf.
James Madison, “Federalist No. 10”: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/coretexts/_files/resources/texts/c/1787%20Federalist%20No%2010.pdf.
Minersville School District v. Gobitis: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/310us586.
Cecilia O’Leary, “To Make a Nation” in: https://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/NCSU4798956.
Sarah Imhoff, “The Supreme Court’s Faith in Belief”: https://tif.ssrc.org/2014/12/16/the-supreme-courts-faith-in-belief/.
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, “Why Distinguish Religion, Legally Speaking?”
Garrett Epps, “What Makes Indiana’s Religious Freedom Law Different?”: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/what-makes-indianas-religious-freedom-law-different/388997/.
William Lloyd Garrison: “The American Union” and Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”: https://www.cpsk12.org/cms/lib/MO01909752/Centricity/Domain/3513/8%20-%20Abolitionists.pdf.
Emma Green, “Satanists Troll Hobby Lobby”: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/satanists-troll-the-hobby-lobby-decision/375268/.
Marcus Rediker, “The ‘Quaker Comet’ was the Greatest Abolitionist You’ve Never Heard Of”: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/quaker-comet-greatest-abolitionist-never-heard-180964401/.
Catherine Beecher, “Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism”: http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abesceba2t.html.
Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?”: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/sojtruth-woman.aspT
Roe v. Wade: https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18 (read the case’s “syllabus”).
Karen Tumulty and Lynn Smith, “Operation Rescue: Soldier in a ‘Holy War’ on Abortion”: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-03-17-mn-1621-story.html.
Heather White, “Reforming Sodom,” chapter one: https://flexpub.com/preview/reforming-sodom.
Michelle Alexander, “The New Jim Crow” introduction: https://www.vanderbilt.edu/ctp/The_New_Jim_Crow.pdf.
Ibram X. Kendi, “The American Nightmare”: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/american-nightmare/612457/.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations”: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/05/the-case-for-reparations/361631/.
Francesca Hyatt, “Religious Groups Stand with #BlackLivesMatter”: https://killingthebuddha.com/ktblog/religious-groups-stand-with-blacklivesmatter/.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2000-05-14-0005140182-story.html.
Martin Luther King, Jr. “Letter from Birmingham City Jail”: https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/sites/mlk/files/letterfrombirmingham_wwcw_0.pdf.
Shaun Assael and Peter Keating, “The Massacre That Spawned the Alt-Right”: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/11/03/greensboro-massacre-white-nationalism-klan-229873.
Kelly J. Baker, “Thank God for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”
Michael E. Miller, “The War of Races”: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/12/27/war-races-how-hateful-ideology-echoes-through-american-history/.
Southern Poverty Law Center, “Identity Evropa”: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/identity-evropaamerican-identity-movement.
David Walsh, “The Bloody History of America’s Christian Identity Movement”: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-bloody-history-of-americas-christian-identity-movement
Susannah Crockford, “How Positivity Can Lead to Conspiratorial Thinking”:
https://religiondispatches.org/how-positivity-can-lead-to-conspiratorial-thinking/.
Jessica Johnson, “The Crusade Against Critical Race Theory in Hanover County, Virginia”: https://therevealer.org/the-crusade-against-critical-race-theory-in-hanover-county-virginia/.
Richard Kent Evans, “MOVE”: https://wrldrels.org/2020/05/12/move/.
Dorothy Day, “Our Brothers, the Communists”: https://zingcreed.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/red-christian-documents-21-our-brothers-the-communists-dorothy-day-us-1949/.
Michael Sandel, “What Isn’t for Sale?”: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/what-isn-8217-t-for-sale/8902/.
UN Human Rights report: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22546&LangID=E.
Chrystia Freeland, “The Disintegration of the World”: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/05/the-disintegration-of-the-world/389534/.
Kevin Kruse, “How Corporate America Invented Christian America”: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/corporate-america-invented-religious-right-conservative-roosevelt-princeton-117030
Steven Pearlstein, “When Shareholder Capitalism Came to Town”: http://prospect.org/article/when-shareholder-capitalism-came-town.
Rich Goldstein, “Superman is Jewish”: https://www.thedailybeast.com/superman-is-jewish-the-hebrew-roots-of-americas-greatest-superhero.
David M. Krueger, “Straight Edge Religion”: https://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/straight-edge-religion-hardcore-punk-and-the-sober-revolution-by-david-m-krueger/.
Peter Walton, “Horace Tapscott Obituary”: https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/horace-tapscott-1934-1999/.
Joseph Winters, “Unstrange Bedfellows: Hip-Hop and Religion.”
Thursday April 4: Religion, Arts and Politics 2
Sophia Rose Arjana, “Monstrous Muslims” in: https://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/NCSU4929388.
Betty M. Bayer, “Divining Grace”: https://onbeing.org/blog/divining-grace/.
Kathleen Frydl, “U.S. is Becoming a Developing Country”: https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/09/30/us-is-becoming-a-developing-country-on-global-rankings-that-measure-democracy-inequality/.
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, “Believing in Religious Freedom”: https://tif.ssrc.org/2012/03/01/believing-in-religious-freedom/.
Patrick Blanchfield, “God and Guns, Part One”: https://wp.nyu.edu/therevealer/2015/09/25/god-and-guns/
Kevin Sullivan, “Primed to Fight the Government”: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/05/21/armed-with-guns-and-constitutions-the-patriot-movement-sees-america-under-threat/.
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