Black is a church ?

Black Is a Church: Christianity and the Contours of African American Life

The title of this new Josef Sorett's book may be questionable. However, the content is largely worth reading.

"Across four chapters that proceed as chronologically organized episodes, Black is a Church maps the ways in which black American culture and identity has been animated by a particular set of, often unmarked, Protestant logics. In doing so, the book charts the mutually reinforcing discourses of racial authenticity and religious orthodoxy that have made Christianity constitutive of the content and forms of blackness."

Link

World Vision: God's Internationalists

As the amount of research on Christian Nationalism is growing rapidly (for good reasons), let's not forget that Evangelicalism per se can't be simply coined as a whole as "nationalist". A very robust internationalist and transnational trend can be noticed all over its contemporary history, including on the US ground.

Time to remind readers of this highly valuable piece of research published by David P. King in 2019 on one of the World's biggest humanitarian NGO today : World Vision.

"Chronicling the evolution of World Vision's practices, theology, rhetoric, and organizational structure, King demonstrates how the organization rearticulated and retained its Christian identity even as it expanded beyond a narrow American evangelical subculture". 

Link

Harry Belafonte (1927-2023)

"You can cage the singer but not the song"

Harry Belafonte (1927-2023)

White US Evangelicals and Politics: a documentary to watch

From the Cold War to the present day, the rise of white Evangelical Christianity in America has brought religion clearly into the public sphere. A must-watch: this three-part documentary (from ARTE Channel) on how the politico-religious machine of US white evangelicalism is determined to reshape USA.... and the world (with the participation of the sociologist Philippe Gonzalez).

Christian nationalism : PRRI 2023 survey

According to the PRRI, "The rising influence of Christian nationalism in some segments of American politics" may pose "a major threat to the health of our democracy. Increasingly, the major battle lines of the culture war are being drawn between a right animated by a Christian nationalist worldview and Americans who embrace the country’s growing racial and religious diversity".

To check this PRRI survey about Christian Nationalism (2023), click here

 

'Fundamentalism and American Culture', third edition updated

'Fundamentalism and American Culture' (Marsden) has long been considered a classic in religious history, and to this day remains unsurpassed. Now available in a new edition, this highly regarded analysis takes us through the full history of the origin and direction of one of America's most influential religious movements.

In the twenty-first century, militantly conservative white evangelicals have become more prominent than ever in American life. Marsden's volume, which now takes the history through the end of the Trump administration, remains the essential starting point for understanding the degree to which that militancy has been shaped by the fundamentalist heritage of the twentieth century. 

To read more about this third and updated edition, click here (link)

A separate Canaan

Why so many postcolonial churches today? One reason may be that the "universalism of the Gospel" taught by Europeans did not always translate/lead into a redefinition of social, economic, status boundaries.

Result: enslaved or colonized people remained both "connected and separated by the Christian faith".

A "separate Canaan"....

Without challenging systemic injustice and economic exploitation.

To bring light on this issue from a Colonial North-American perspective, let's remind this brilliant book published in 1998 by John Sensbach:

"Based on German church documents, including dozens of rare biographies of black Moravians, A Separate Canaan is the first full-length study of contact between people of German and African descent in early America. Exploring the fluidity of race in Revolutionary era America, it highlights the struggle of African Americans to secure their fragile place in a culture unwilling to give them full human rights. In the early nineteenth century, white Moravians forsook their spiritual inclusiveness, installing blacks in a separate church. Just as white Americans throughout the new republic rejected African American equality, the Moravian story illustrates the power of slavery and race to overwhelm other ideals".

Link

Aimee Semple McPherson

Within my current researches on Prosperity Gospel, I am in the process of reading Matthew Avery Sutton's book:   

Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America, Harvard University Press (May 31, 2009)

"Her life marked the beginning of Pentecostalism's advance from the margins of Protestantism to the mainstream of American culture. Indeed, from her location in Hollywood, McPherson's integration of politics with faith set precedents for the religious right, while her celebrity status, use of spectacle, and mass media savvy came to define modern evangelicalism".

A remarkable book about one of the most influential women in contemporary Christian america.

Link

Evangelical belonging and Migrant experience (USA)

In the Hands of God: How Evangelical Belonging Transforms Migrant Experience in the United States

Johanna Bard Richlin

Why do migrants become more deeply evangelical in the United States and how does this religious identity alter their self-understanding? In the Hands of God examines this question through a unique lens, foregrounding the ways that churches transform what migrants feel.

Drawing from her extensive fieldwork among Brazilian migrants in the Washington, DC, area, Johanna Bard Richlin shows that affective experience is key to comprehending migrants' turn toward intense religiosity, and their resulting evangelical commitment.

Link

Madeleine Albright (1937-2022)

Former secretary of State (USA), Madeleine Albright (1937- 2022)i s gone.

She left a mixed legacy of strong committment to Democracy worldwide, but also of ambiguous global interventionism (including strong support for embargo on Irak, indirectly leading to DAESH's birth).

Smart and well-trained, interested by the role of Faith on Geopolitics, she published a significant book in 2006.

Its title : The Mighty and the Almighty. Introduced by President Bill Clinton. 

In that book, she argued that politics and religious values can work together to promote peace. In her seventeenth chapter about Africa, she pleaded for a better training for diplomats, who should take faith seriously. A good lesson that applies to French diplomats too.

Link.

How Christian Communities React to Right-Wing Populism

A Religious Vaccination? 

Right-wing populists across Western democracies have markedly increased references to Christianity in recent years. While there is much debate about how and why they have done so, less attention has been paid to how Christian communities react to this development. The present study addresses this gap through a comparative analysis of Christian responses to right-wing populist politics in Germany, France and the US.

Read more (link)

Why the world is becoming more French

From industrial policy and nuclear power to "strategic autonomy" and the 35-hour week, the 2020s are popularising many French instincts about world affairs and the state.

Thank you Jeremy Cliffe for this stimulating analysis (NewStatesman)

"Evangelicalism & Religious Experience in Black Women’s Activism"

This article centers Black religious women’s activist memoirs, including Mamie Till Mobley’s Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America (2003) and Rep. Lucia Kay McBath’s Standing Our Ground: The Triumph of Faith over Gun Violence: A Mother’s Story (2018), to refocus the narrative of American Evangelicalism and politics around Black women’s authoritative narratives of religious experience, expression, mourning, and activism.

Available in full access here (link)

Nationalism, American evangelicals, and conservatism

Historians Anthea Butler and Heather J. Sharkey (picture) and political scientist Michele Margolis share their thoughts on the history of American evangelicals in politics, Trump’s appeal, and what it means for the future of the GOP.

Thank you University of Pennsylvania for sharing these bright analysis.

 

Link.

Did Church-State separation REALLY slow down Slavery Abolition?

Joseph Prud'homme (Ph.D. Princeton) is the Burton Family Chair in Religion, Politics, and Culture and the Director of the Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture at Washington College in Chestertown, MD, USA.

He just released a very interesting piece of research, "Separation of Church and State, American Exceptionalism, and the Contemporary Social Moment: Viewing Church–State Separation from the Priority of Slavery"

 His main point is this :

White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals play a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. These evangelicals raise a starkly consequential question for electoral politics: Why do they claim morality while supporting politicians who act immorally by most Christian measures? In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler answers that racism is at the core of conservative evangelical activism and power.

A very much needed scholarly book to put in historical perspective White Evangelical's contemporary positioning.

Link.

Evangelicals in Brazil and in USA : a comparative study

Debates do NER is a Brazilian biannual journal, created in 1997 on the initiative of the Center for the Study of Religion (NER), of the Graduate Program in Social Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).

Debates do NER is currently one of the most important vehicles for disseminating research related to the Social Sciences of Religion in Mercosur. Thanks to my Brazilian colleagues Marcelo Camurça and Emerson Giumbelli, whom I warmly thank, I had the opportunity to publish in 2020 a comparative historical study on Evangelicalism, USA vs Brazil.

French documentaries on Billy Graham

Billy Graham, "America's pastor", is a global figure. The example of France is revealing. Although France can't claim more than 3% of protestants (including 1 million of Evangelicals), Billy Graham has strongly impacted the country. 

This is why the French National TV Network "France 2" has devoted a very detailed documentary to Billy Graham. The first part has been released last sunday and can still be viewed for free here : 

Link

Current debates within the "Black Church", USA: a needed book

In USA, what we use to define as "Black theology" has emphasized the role of Christian faith in addressing racism and other forms of oppression, arguing that Jesus urged his disciples to seek the freedom of all peoples.

Meanwhile, the  so-called "Black church", even when focused on social concerns, has often emphasized personal piety rather than social protest. With the rising influence of white Evangelicalism, biblical fundamentalism, and the prosperity gospel, the divide has become even more pronounced.

In The Divided Mind of the Black Church (2020), Raphael G. Warnock, Senior Pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., helps us to understand the current debates within Black Protestants (mostly Evangelicals) in USA.

Link.

A prominent US Evangelical becomes Catholic

Hot news !

Mark Galli, highly respected figure of US evangelicalism, converts to Catholicism (link).

Until January 2020, Mark Galli edited the world's largest evangelical monthly, Christianity Today (with a circulation of 120,000 copies). Presbyterian, then Anglican, he eventually joined the Catholic Church in Rome.

St Louis (USA): Jean ROUAULT's religious paintings revealed again

In the middle of the XXth Century, French catholic painter Jean Rouault was received in the US as one of the major contemporary painters. Not anymore. Will an exhibition in St Louis reverse the trend?

From RNS : "ST. LOUIS (RNS) What can a nearly forgotten set of 58 masterful etchings by a man once called one of the great artists of the 20^th century tell us about the state of religious art in America?

At a rare showing of “Miserere et Guerre” (“Mercy and War”), a bleak but compelling series by the idiosyncratic French modernist Georges Rouault, the pious and the curious will have a chance to judge for themselves".

To read more, click here (link)

A major comparative book on immigrant faith (Phillip Connor)

It is more than likely that the majority of religious attenders in the Paris area today do come from an immigrant background. Immigrant faith? It's not a footnote. It is a major aspect of contemporary religion!

Thanks to Phillip Connor, Immigrant Faith (NYU Press, 2014) is providing new comparative insights on this major topic.

It examines trends and patterns relating to religion in the lives of immigrants. The volume moves beyond specific studies of particular faiths in particular immigrant destinations to present the religious lives of immigrants in the United States, Canada, and Europe on a broad scale.

Religion is not merely one aspect among many in immigrant lives. Immigrant faith affects daily interactions, shapes the future of immigrants in their destination society, and influences society beyond the immigrants themselves. In other words, to understand immigrants, one must understand their faith.

Read more here (link).

Norway best place to live, France 8th, USA 13th (2009)

The annual United Nations Human Development Index has been released today (Monday 5th of October).

According to this index, based on such criteria as life expectancy, literacy, school enrolment and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, Norway is the best place to live in.

 

Click to continue

 

United States of... France?

Did you think that since the Iraqi war, France and the US had nothing in common anymore?

Far from that.

Click to continue

Politics and Religion, France/USA

Both France and the USA do like to teach the World about values. These two great democracies share a common emphasis on universal rights, and it is no surprise if the world debate about the Iraqi war in 2003 turned around what France and what the US had to say.

How to explain that? By going back to History, particularly in studying the relationship between politics and religion in France and the US. This is what this new book is about.

Click to continue

Religion and American Politics

In French, we describe a cliche or an extremely common topic as a «tarte à la crème» (cream pie). Sweet and familiar taste but difficult to digest.

In this regard, «Religion and Politics in America» is a typical «tarte à la crème». A very good (and important) topic, but hard to digest. Too many books, too many opinions, too many passions.
This particular book, however, deserves to be savoured more than others.

Click to continue