Sociology of Religion: Week 12
I. Finish "America and the Holocaust" (see last week's outline)
A. The ironies of Einstein's role in creating the atomic bomb
B. The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: 9 December 1948... see p. 62, Power, A Problem from Hell
1. Result of 17-year campaign by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew
Howard Becker and "moral entrepreneurs"...see p. 78, account of Lemkin's funeral
2. implemented when 20th country signed (U.S. not among them)
3. Campaign to get United States senate to endorse the convention... no real champion in the 1950s and early 1960s (why not?)... picked up by Senator William Proxmire in 1967; 19 years and 3211 speeches later, U.S. finally endorsed the conventio
II. Religion and ethnicity (chapter 6, CSK)
A. Ethnic groups
1. Definition: a group that sees itself (and is seen by others???) as having a shared social origin and culture
a. Historicizing ethnic groups... Max Weber: the fluidity of ethnic group self definitions over time
Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, 1983
2. Race as a subset of ethnicity: group that is viewed as genetically distinct (and I'd add, most often inferior or superior)
B. Religion and race/ethnicity
1. Jews as a race: a status into which one is born (not based on conversion, although in the United States, that is possible)... orthodox vs. reform
a. Stark on the conversion of Jews to Christianity in the Roman Empire... 438 CE: Christianity established as only legal religion in the Roman Empire
b. More recent forced conversions... massacres and expulsions: 1290--England; 1396: France; 1421: Austria; 1492: Spain; 1494: Portugal (but mostly conversions);
1770: limited to Pale of Settlement in Russia/Poland
c. Contrast treatment by Christian countries and by Moslem Countries (many of those expelled from Spain fled to Turkey, where they were welcomed).
d. Anti-Semitism in the United States
Brodkin: How Jews Became White Folks (episode with the boats)
2. Religion and ethnicity in the United States... CSK distinction between ethnic fusion (Amish, Hutterites, Hasidic Jews, Nation of islam), ethnic religion (Greek Orthodox), and religious ethnicity (Scandinanvian Lutherans)... How important is this distinction?
3. The Triple Melting Pot hypothesis: William Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, 1955
Intermarriage as the ultimate test of assimilation
Current trends
4. European Americans (whites) as a new ethnic group: CSK--"The cables connecting ethnicity to religion (in the United States) have either been severed or seriously frayed."
5. African Americans
a. Christianity as a compensation vs. Christianity as "an important cultural resource in challenging injustice and oppression" (Eugene Genovese: Roll, Jordan, Roll: the World the Slaves Made)
b. Perhaps both: DuBois's concept of double consciousness
c. Historically, three denominational streams in the African American Christiant community
1) Baptist: Martin Luther King and the Southern Leadership Conference (role of the black churches in the civil rights movement...
McAdams: Political Process and the development of Black Insurgency
Morris: The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (e.g., Reverend Fred Shuttleworth in Birmingham)
2) Methodist, especially AME
3) Pentecostal: Church of God in Christ
(last week of our course: see reading from recent New York Times--"Mission from Africa")
d. Church and social class in the Black community... included as a chapter in the classic study by Cayton and Drake: Black Metropolis
1) Storefront churches: Pentecostal and "enthusiastic"
2) Mainstream Protestant: "respectable"
3) Ministers who often can walk a fine line between the two
III. Gender, sexuality, and religion
A. Feminist movement: women as clergy
1. About half of Christian denominations in the United States presently ordain women and your text notes that about 9% of U.S. clergy are women.
a. Protestant churches... very different pace by denomination...Quakers in colonial America (third largest religious body in the colonies at the time) allowed women in ministerial roles, though not ordained; a Congregational church ordained Antoinette Brown in 1853, although her ordination was not recognized by her denomination: See Wikipedia for differences by denomination
"Stained glass ceiling?" Woman elected "Presiding Bishop" in the American Episcopal Church (but remember the other trouble they have generated as a result of ordaining a gay minister)
"Now the task is no longer to suppress dissent; it is to keep up with it, just in case, as the sixth-century Rule of Benedict says of visitors who point out difficult things to the community about itself, 'God guided them to the monastery for this very reason.'” National Catholic Reporter, March 25, 2009
Other links featuring Chittester:
Text: Gallup poll in which 60% of American Catholics support ordination of women.
Text speaks of "loose coupling," with the example of denominations that won't accept women clergy but will accept women in their seminaries (training schools for clergy)... "In many of the mainline seminaries today, more than half of the students preparing for ministry are women."
2. Reform Judaism created its first woman rabbi in 1972
3. Islam: three of the four Sunni schools, as well as many Shia, agree that woman as imam may lead women in a prayer service. None of existing traditional schools of Islam recognize women as being able to lead a mixed congregation in prayer.
4. The degree to which women have played a role in the social construction of church has been less recognized and less studied....
B. Culture wars
1. The "surprising alliance" of conservative Christian denominations and the Catholic church in their opposition to abortion
2. A new alliance, still including the "pro-life" perspective but giving at least equal emphasis to issues of poverty and injustice.... Sojourners community; Rick Warren and Saddleback church
C. Religion and divorce in the United States...Interestingly the divorce rate is actually quite a bit higher in the so called "red" states,which are more Republican and culturally conservative... why?
D. Gays, lesbians, and religion.... probably at present (2009) the most divisive issue in Christian churches in the United States
Court decisions and constitutional amendments: most recent developments
1. Referendum overturning gay/lesbian marriage in California
2. 4 states now recognizing gay/lesbian marriage: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Iowa
3. Announcement this week by the governor of New York that he is introducing a law to legalize gay and lesbian marriage (will have to get through the legislature, which would be a first in the United States)
4. Split within the American Episcopal church over election of a Presiding Bishop who is a woman and who supports the ordination of gay or lesbian bishops, with quite a few conservative churches allying themselves with a culturally conservative Episcopal bishop in Africa, leaving the Anglican Communion... (see article in week fifteen: "Mission from Africa." )
5. Recent conference in Duluth, "Welcoming the Marginalized," after lesbian head of Marshall School had her house spray-painted twice with homophobic slogans.... led by Reverend John Shelby Spong, sponsored by ten Duluth communities of faith
E. Images of God and Gendered Spirituality
1. The sexism of the church. Mary Daly: "A woman's asking for equality in the church would be comparable to a black person's asking for equality in the Ku Klux Klan."
2. My experience, first at Peace UCC and then at Lakeside Presbyterian
the old way: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures here below, praise Him above you heavenly host, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
Revisions: Peace Church: "Praise God From whom all blessings flow, praise God all creatures here below, Praise God above you heavenly host, Creator, Christ, and Holy Ghost."
Lakeside Presbyterian: "Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise God all creatures here below, praise God above you heavenly host, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
3. Current UCC Hymnal: "Bring Many Names."
"Strong mother God , working night and day,. Planning all the wonders of creation, setting each equation genius at play: Hail and hosanna, strong mother God !"
“Warm father God, hugging every child, feeling all the strains of
human living, caring and forgiving till we’re reconciled: Hail and Hosanna, warm father God
4. A prayer from First Unitarian Church of San Jose:
Dear God, Mother-Father of us all,
grant us life-giving ways
strength for birthing,
and a nurturing spirit
that we may take attentive care of our world,
our communities, and those precious beings
entrusted to us by biology, or by destiny, or by friendship, fellowship or
fate.
Give us the heart of a mother today. Amen
5. Revival of Neo-pagan/Wiccan religions as a response to the perceived sexism of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam .... small but interesting... Helen Berger, A Community of Witches
Joan Chittester: Guided to the Monastery