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Wadsworth, “Ambivalent Miracles: Evangelicals and the Politics”

Next month, University of Virginia Press will publish Ambivalent Miracles: Evangelicals and the Politics by Nancy D. Wadsworth (University of Denver).  Wadsworth sk6.612345678.inddThe publisher’s description follows.

Over the past three decades, American evangelical Christians have undergone unexpected, progressive shifts in the area of race relations, culminating in a national movement that advocates racial integration and equality in evangelical communities. The movement, which seeks to build cross-racial relationships among evangelicals, has meant challenging well-established paradigms of church growth that built many megachurch empires. While evangelical racial change (ERC) efforts have never been easy and their reception has been mixed, they have produced meaningful transformation in religious communities. Although the movement as a whole encompasses a broad range of political views, many participants are interested in addressing race-related political issues that impact their members, such as immigration, law enforcement, and public education policy.

Ambivalent Miracles traces the rise and ongoing evolution of evangelical racial change efforts within the historical, political, and cultural contexts that have shaped them. Nancy D. Wadsworth argues that the stunning breakthroughs this movement has achieved, its curious political ambivalence, and its internal tensions are products of a complex cultural politics constructed at the intersection of U.S. racial and religious history and the meaning-making practices of conservative evangelicalism. Employing methods from the emerging field of political ethnography, Wadsworth draws from a decade’s worth of interviews and participant observation in ERC settings, textual analysis, and survey research, as well as a three-year case study, to provide the first exhaustive treatment of ERC efforts in political science.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Podcast on the Economics of Religion

The Library of Economics and Liberty has posted an interesting-looking podcast by University of Washington Professor Anthony Gill on the economics of religion:

Anthony Gill of the University of Washington and host of the podcast Research on Religion talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the economics of religion. The conversation focuses on the relationship between religion and the State–how does religion respond to a State-sanctioned monopoly? Why do some governments allow religious liberty while others deny it? The conversation concludes with a discussion of how property rights interact with religious freedom.

You can download the podcast, and see a partial transcript, here.

Posted on by JCPW

Around the Web This Week

Some interesting law & religion stories from around the web this week:

Posted on by JCPW

Potter (ed.), “Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf”

Potter-—-Sectarian-Politics-CMYK-webThis January, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers will publish Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf edited by Lawrence G. Potter (Columbia University). The publisher’s description follows.

Long a taboo topic, as well as one that has alarmed outside powers, sectarian conflict in the Middle East is on the rise. The contributors to this book examine sectarian politics in the Persian Gulf, including the GCC states, Yemen, Iran and Iraq, and consider the origins and con- sequences of sectarianism broadly construed, as it affects ethnic, tribal and religious groups. They also present a theoretical and comparative framework for understanding sectarianism, as well as country-specific chapters based on recent research in the area. Key issues that are scrutinised include the nature of sectarianism, how identity moves from a passive to an active state, and the mechanisms that trigger conflict. The strategies of governments such as rentier economies and the ‘invention’ of partisan national histories that encourage or manage sectarian differences are also highlighted, as is the role of outside powers in fostering sectarian strife. The volume also seeks to clarify whether movements such as the Islamic revival or the Arab Spring obscure the continued salience of religious and ethnic cleavages. Published in collaboration with: Georgetown University Center for International and Regional Studies School of Foreign Service in Qatar.

Posted on by JCPW

Winroth, “The Conversion of Scandinavia”

9780300205534This January, Yale University Press will publish The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe by Anders Winroth (Yale University). The publisher’s description follows.

In this book a MacArthur Award-winning scholar argues for a radically new interpretation of the conversion of Scandinavia from paganism to Christianity in the early Middle Ages. Overturning the received narrative of Europe’s military and religious conquest and colonization of the region, Anders Winroth contends that rather than acting as passive recipients, Scandinavians converted to Christianity because it was in individual chieftains’ political, economic, and cultural interests to do so.

Through a painstaking analysis and historical reconstruction of both archeological and literary sources, and drawing on scholarly work that has been unavailable in English, Winroth opens up new avenues for studying European ascendency and the expansion of Christianity in the medieval period.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Discussion on Banning “Islamophobia” (Jan. 17)

The Hudson Institute in Washington will host a discussion, “The Organization of Islamic Cooperation: Free Speech Implications of a Proposed Ban on ‘Islamophobia,'” on January 17:

“Islamophobia” is a widely used yet vague and controversial term referring to anti-Muslim bigotry. In recent years, identifying, monitoring, reporting on, and working to ban Islamophobia worldwide has been a major focus of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The OIC is an international body of 56 member states that is based in Saudi Arabia and active within the United Nations. While the United States has formally recognized its work in the past – US ambassadors have observed its sessions and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton co-chaired some of its meetings – American awareness of the organization remains scant.

 In 2007, the OIC began issuing regular “observatory” reports on Islamophobia, and since 2009 has published monthly bulletins that cite primarily Western examples of Islamophobia.

Is Islamophobia a serious problem, or is the term itself an ideological cudgel designed to incite fear and criminalize dissent?  Dr. Mark Durie will discuss these and other basic questions related to the OIC’s efforts to ban Islamophobia.

Details are here.

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Cohen, “Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era”

This month, Oxford published Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial 9780199340408Citizenship in the Modern Era, by Julia Phillips Cohen (Vanderbilt University). The publisher’s description follows.

The Ottoman-Jewish story has long been told as a romance between Jews and the empire. The prevailing view is that Ottoman Jews were protected and privileged by imperial policies and in return offered their unflagging devotion to the imperial government over many centuries. In this book, Julia Phillips Cohen offers a corrective, arguing that Jewish leaders who promoted this vision were doing so in response to a series of reforms enacted by the nineteenth-century Ottoman state: the new equality they gained came with a new set of expectations. Ottoman subjects were suddenly to become imperial citizens, to consider their neighbors as brothers and their empire as a homeland.

Becoming Ottomans is the first book to tell the story of Jewish political integration into a modern Islamic empire. It begins with the process set in motion by the imperial state reforms known as the Tanzimat, which spanned the years 1839-1876 and legally emancipated the non-Muslims of the empire. Four decades later the situation was difficult to recognize. By the close of the nineteenth century, Ottoman Muslims and Jews alike regularly referred to Jews as a model community, or millet-as a group whose leaders and members knew how to serve their state and were deeply engaged in Ottoman politics. The struggles of different Jewish individuals and groups to define the public face of their communities is underscored in their responses to a series of important historical events.

Charting the dramatic reversal of Jews in the empire over a half-century, Becoming Ottomans offers new perspectives for understanding Jewish encounters with modernity and citizenship in a centralizing, modernizing Islamic state in an imperial, multi-faith landscape.

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Oslington (ed.), “The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics”

Next month, Oxford will publish The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and 9780199729715_140Economics, edited by Paul Oslington (Australian Catholic University). The publisher’s description follows.

Many important contemporary debates cross economics and religion, in turn raising questions about the relationship between the two fields. This book, edited by a leader in the new interdisciplinary field of economics and religion and with contributions by experts on different aspects of the relationship between economics and Christianity, maps the current state of scholarship and points to new directions for the field. It covers the history of the relationship between economics and Christianity, economic thinking in the main Christian traditions, and the role of religion in economic development, as well as new work on the economics of religious behavior and religious markets and topics of debate between economists and theologians. It is essential reading for economists concerned with the foundations of their discipline, historians, moral philosophers, theologians seeking to engage with economics, and public policy researchers and practitioners.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

American Freedom and Catholic Power

It was only a matter of time before this sort of thing was bound to appear, though perhaps it is somewhat disappointing to see it in the pages of US News and World Report. The specific claim seems to be that by granting an emergency stay in the Little Sisters of the Poor case, Justice Sotomayor is waging a “war on women” because she is imposing her Catholic views on the rest of the nation in violation of the law. But that claim is buried within lots of other mud, and I’m afraid I can’t do justice to it without letting much of the rest hatch out:

The lady from the Bronx just dropped the ball on American women and girls as surely as she did the sparkling ball at midnight on New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Or maybe she’s just a good Catholic girl.

The Supreme Court is now best understood as the Extreme Court. One big reason why is that six out of nine Justices are Catholic. Let’s be forthright about that. (The other three are Jewish.) Sotomayor, appointed by President Obama, is a Catholic who put her religion ahead of her jurisprudence. What a surprise, but that is no small thing….

Sotomayor’s blow brings us to confront an uncomfortable reality. More than WASPS, Methodists, Jews, Quakers or Baptists, Catholics often try to impose their beliefs on you, me, public discourse and institutions. Especially if “you” are female. This is not true of all Catholics – just look at House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. But right now, the climate is so cold when it comes to defending our settled legal ground that Sotomayor’s stay is tantamount to selling out the sisterhood. And sisterhood is not as powerful as it used to be, ladies.

Catholics in high places of power have the most trouble, I’ve noticed, practicing the separation of church and state. The pugnacious Catholic Justice, Antonin Scalia, is the most aggressive offender on the Court, but not the only one. Of course, we can’t know for sure what Sotomayor was thinking, but it seems she has joined the ranks of the five Republican Catholic men on the John Roberts Court in showing a clear religious bias when it comes to women’s rights and liberties. We can no longer be silent about this. Thomas Jefferson, the principal champion of the separation between state and church, was thinking particularly of pernicious Rome in his writings. He deeply distrusted the narrowness of Vatican hegemony.

Now, as it happens, I am Catholic. And, as it also happens, on the legal merits, I am persuaded that the statutory argument in favor of the Little Sisters of the Poor as to the issue of accommodation of non-exempted nonprofits is strong–stronger than the arguments the government advances. I also believe that a strong free exercise clause claim can be made in light of the individualized exemptions that have been meted out, though to date this argument is generally not being made. These are all legal claims, and so to the extent that any judge agrees with these claims, it would seem to me that they are putting the law first in ruling as they do. Others disagree with my legal views, and they, too, are putting the law first. They are acting and speaking appropriately about their views of the law–in good faith and by their best lights. I think it is a terrible error to believe that anytime a person disagrees with one’s legal views, the reason must be that they are acting in bad faith.

I will say that outside of the legal fight, and as to larger political questions, I do not see why exempting the members of “a nunnery” (as the author so tenderly puts it) from the compulsion to be provided with free access to contraception would constitute a Catholic war on women. I am informed that the members of the Little Sisters of the Poor are women. They seem not to want these products. I don’t believe anybody is waging a war on anybody else; it degrades the horror of war to speak in these terms. And yet, if anyone is conducting a hostile campaign against women, it is those seeking to compel these women to do what they don’t want to do.

Furthermore, if the author were even marginally more serious about providing evidence for her claims, she might have investigated how many of the other judges who have granted injunctions in these cases–18 other such courts, by my current count, and more judges than that–are Catholic. If they are all Catholic, is it also her view that they are all imposing Catholicism on the nation in violation of the law? If they are not all Catholic, what explains their legal findings? Are they all imposing their non-Catholic religious views notwithstanding the law? What if some of the judges who granted injunctions have no religious affiliation? Are they also imposing their non-religious views in finding for the Little Sisters? Or is it only when a judge is Catholic that it can be assumed that she is imposing her views? And what about the judges who denied injunctions? Are any of them Catholic? If they are not, are they imposing their views on the rest of us too? If they are Catholic, I suppose one could claim that they are the good sort of Catholic—Catholics like Nancy Pelosi, as the author puts it–judges who don’t impose their views at all. Still, it would be useful to have this information in order to assess the cogency of the claims.

I recognize that for people who write columns like this one, arguments of this sort are not likely to be persuasive. Indeed, once Ms. Stiehm identifies the source (me), she will surely dismiss out of hand anything that follows without bothering to read it. That is regrettable, but it follows directly from the reality that Ms. Stiehm is not really interested in law or argument at all. She’s interested in rhetoric; unfortunately the rhetoric that interests her is sloppy and misinformed.

Here is a different uncomfortable reality that columns like this should compel us to face. The long history of American hatred of Catholics is alive, and well, and flourishing. It is kept in fine and proud form by people like this, and given space to breathe in all kinds of prominent venues. It will intensify in the months and years ahead. Dark times are coming.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

Why Would Anyone Think He Doesn’t Take This Seriously?

Photo from the Huffington Post

A “Pastafarian” has taken the oath of office for the town council in Pomfret, New York, wearing a colander on his head. From the Huffington Post:

The newly-elected council member’s bizarre choice of millinery was due to his membership of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, an atheist group founded in 2005 and named after Richard Dawkins’ now-famous ‘Dead Gods’ criticism of religion.

Schaeffer told the local Observer newspaper: “It’s just a statement about religious freedom… It’s a religion without any dogma.”

The Town of Pomfret is in Chautauqua County in upstate New York. According to Wikipedia, the population is 14,965. Not counting clowns.