Set 1: Select 3 questions from section A and 2 from section B.

Section A

1. In the introduction to Religion and American Life, what do the authors mean by the claim "the story of religion in America, then, is not an aberrant story"?

2. What role did dreams play in the religion of Algonquian Indians?

3. The authors use Henry Fielding's fictional character, Reverend Thwackum, to make a point regarding religion in early America.  What do they make of Thwackum's statement: "When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England"?

4. How did the religious worldviews of Africans and Indians differ from those of European settlers?

5. How did Indians receive missionaries in both New Spain and New France?  How did native Americans in what is now California and Canada resist the incursions of missionaries?  For those native Americans who were receptive to the newcomers, what would their adopted Christianity look like?

6. How did Jesuits in French Canada conduct their missions?  Were they a successful?

7. Why do the authors contend that the "importance of religion in New England was not unique among England's American colonies"? What roles would religion play in the southern colonies?  How would religion differ in the North and South?

8. What are some of the myths concerning Puritanism?  How should we understand the Puritans?  What was the basis of their beliefs?

9. In what ways was New England "spiritually diverse" during the late 1600s?

10. What advice did the Puritan John Winthrop offer to those intrepid souls heading to Massachusetts? (69-70)  What does this say about the Puritan vision of America?

Section B

11. Stephens, Recent Trends in American Religious History, 1-7.  Why does the study of religious history  seem to matter now perhaps more than it did a generation ago?

12. What are some of the subjects and eras that religious historians study?

13. “Hopi Ceremonies,” (CP). Describe the role kachina dolls play in the lives of young Hopi Indians.  What lessons do they learn from kachina dolls?

14. “Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish Castaway, Becomes an Indian Healer, 1542” (CP). What did Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca think of the Native Americans he encountered in the American southeast?

WED Jan 19: Last Day to Register, Add a Class, or Change to Audit (1 week from 1st day of classes)

Set 2: Select 2 questions from section A and 1 from section B and 1 from section C.

Section A

1. Butler, Wacker, and Balmer write that "New York prefigured the religious future of 18th-century America"?   What do they mean by that statement?

Section B

10. How does historian David D. Hall counter the idea that Puritan religion in the 17th century was a rational and coherent, Christian intellectual system?

Section C

14. Juding from the document in your course pack, "John Winthrop Outlines His Plan for a Godly Settlement, 1630," how did Puritan leaders envision their communty's relationship with God?

15.  How does "evil" arise, according to Wintrhop and Bradford?

16. What was the initial purpose of Harvard College?

17.  In what sense was Maryland's Act of Religious Toleration (1649) "tolerant"?

18. In Cotton Mather's estimation, how can one detect withes and the work of the devil?  Why did witchcraft trials, and the fear they generated, dissappear in the 18th century?

Set 3: Answer 2 questions from section A and one each from B and C.

Section A

1. What were the basic differences between those Americans who supported revivalism in the 18th century and those who opposed it?

2. During the 1700s, how did American religious groups start to diverge from religious groups in Europe?

3. What were revivalists' core Christian beliefs?  How did Jonathan Edwards (pgs. 138-39) and Sarah Osborn Leads (pgs 140-41) embody this revivalistic evangelicalism?

4. The American Revolution, the authors note, was a truly secular event.  Yet it would also profoundly impact society.  What affect did the American Revolution have upon denominations in the former colonies?

5. In what ways did the First Amendment to the Constitution represent the American religious situation?

Section B

6. Mark Noll states that he is interested in a social history of American theology. How does Noll try to connect social movements with religious beliefs?  From Noll's perspective, how would events in American history influence Christian theology?

7. Why does Noll compare American religious beliefs with those in Europe?  What conclusions can he draw from such comparisons?  Was American religion unique, exceptional?

8. What is the meaning of Noll's concept of an "American Synthesis"?

Section C

9. Thomas Kidd, “The Great Awakening and the Contested Origins of American Evangelical Christianity,” Recent Trends in American Religious History.  In Thomas Kidd's estimation, why did the Great Awakening produce so much conflict between various groups?

10. Forum on George Marsden’s Jonathan Edwards, Recent Trends in American Religious History.  How does George Marsden argue that Jonathan Edwards life and influence has often been overlooked?  What does American history look like with a greater focus on Edwards?

11. What do Wilfred and Bruce Kucklick think of Marsden's argument? 

Set 4: Answer 1 from each section.

Section A

“Interview with Stephen Prothero,” Recent Trends in American Religious History
1.  In Stephen Prothero's view, how do historians and religious studies scholars differ in their research and writing?

2. What do American's know about religion and religious history?

Section B

David L. Holmes, “A Layperson’s Guide to Distinguishing a Deist from an Orthodox Christian,” in The Faiths of the Founding Fathers (2006) (CP)
3. After reading the selection from David Holmes' book, explain the argument that has developed over the faith of the founding fathers.

4. According to Holmes, in what sense were the founders religious?

5. How can scholars determine the extent of the founders' devotion or lack thereof?

6. Describe the reservations a Deist might have had concerning Christianity.

Section C

David D. Kirkpatrick, "Putting God Back Into American History," New York Times, February 2, 2005, pg 4 (CP)

7. Who is David Barton?

8. How has the controversy over the founders' religious views shaped America's conservative culture?

9. What does David Kirkpatrick mean when he writes: "But academic historians, including some conservative and evangelical scholars, give the Christian conservative veneration of this history about a B-minus"?

Section D

“Thomas Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, 1779”
10. Describe Jefferson's argument for religious toleration.

11. Under this statute, could tax dollars be used to support churches? (This question requires some digging beyond the document.)

“James Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance, 1785”
12. To what extent does Madison's arguement rely on Enlightenment principles?  How?

13. What does Madison say about historic Christianity?

Set 5: Answer one from each section.

Section A
Religion in American Life

1. Describe the state of organized religion in the years immediately after the American Revolution.

2. According to the authors, what is "civil religion"?  Does it still exist in contemporary America?  How so?

3. How did some early Americans resist traditional Christian religion?  Is this set of religious circumstances similar to religion in America today?

Section B

4. Explain the difference between the First Great Awakening (1730s-40s) and the Second Great Awakening (1800-1860s).  How would these differences shape the outcomes of each of these revivals?

5. Why is Francis Asbury often called the "founding father" of American Methodism?  Describe his activities, strategies, and religious views.

6. What was innovative about Charles Grandison Finney's "new measures"?  How would his views change American Christianity?  Do his innovations still influence American Christians?

7. What do the authors suggest is the legacy of evangelicalism

Section C
Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (1990)

8. Historian Nathan Hatch asserts that American Christianity underwent a dramatic change between the American Revolution and 1845.  What were the most significant features of this transformation?

9.  What does Hatch mean by the term the "democratization of American Christianity"?  What is "religious populism"?  Do most Christians still believe in a form of democratized Christianity?

10. Hatch claims that the leaders of new religious movements in the early 1800s held "convictions that were essentially modern and individualistic"(14).  What does he mean by that?

Section D
“Lucy Wight Meets Shaker Leader Mother Ann Lee (c. 1780), 1826” (CP); and “Joseph Smith Explains How an Angel Guided Him to Found the Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), 1842” (CP).

11. Explain the role of trances and visions in the account of Lucy Wight.

12. Why did Wight not feel that most religions were built on a solid foundation?  Why did the Shakers appeal to her?

13. Joseph Smith, like Lucy Wight, came to similar conclusions about religious groups he encountered.  Why was he dissatisfied?

14. What did Joseph Smith have to say about the ancient history of America, and why?

15. Smith spent some time recalling the persecution Mormons endured.  Why would Mormons be harassed so fiercely?

16. What can one say about the place of religious authority based on the accounts of Wight and Smith?

Set 6: Answer two from section A, one from B, and one from C.

Section A

1. Why did Jonathan Sarna originally encounter opposition when he talked about writing a history of American Judaism?

2. How did Jews in 19th century America “revitalize” their faith?  Why did they do so?

3. Sarna writes, “Diversity is the third theme in the history of American Judaism and one, to my mind, that has been absolutely central almost from the very beginning” (42).  Explain that statement.  How has diversity been central?

4. How did Jews try to “save American Judaism”? (45)

Section B

5. What is the central theme of John T. McGreevy’s Catholicism and American Freedom?

6. According to Leo Ribuffo, why have American Protestants worried so much about the influence of Catholicism?

Section C

7. What kinds of questions does Ribuffo think McGreevy’s book raises, or leaves unanswered?

8. What sort of criticism does Christopher Shannon offer of McGreevy’s book?

9. How does McGreevy respond to his critics?

Set 7: Answer two from each section.

Section A
Ann Braude, "Women's History IS American Religious History," 159-175 in Religion and American Culture

1. Anne Braude writes "this essay explores how we would tell the story of American religion if we took as our point of departure that fact that women constitute the majority of participants in religious activities and institutions" (161).  That being the case, how does her piece challenge the work of earlier historians?

2.  What is Braude's answer to the question "what made each group's teachings and practices meaningful to its female members"? (163)

3. What does Braude mean by "declension"?  How does she argue against this motif?

Section B
Charles Joyner, "'Believer I know': The emergence of African-American Christianity," 179-195, in Religion and American Culture.

4. Charles Joyner writes that to "underestimate the Africanity of African American Christianity is to rob the slaves of their heritage.  But to overestimate the Africanity of African American Christianity is to rob the slaves of their creativity" (181).  Explain what these statements mean.

5. How did slaveholders introduce a "selective" version of Christianity to slaves?

6. What were the essential beliefs and worship practices of African American slaves in the years before the Civil War?  Do these traditions survive today in black churches?

Set 8: Answer two from each section.

Section A

1. Describe Samuel Ringgold’s views on Christianity and Quakerism in particular.

2. What was the purpose of the Sabbath for Victorian Christians like the Fletchers, who Harriet Beecher Stowe observed?

Section B

3. What might account for the change over the centuries in how the Sabbath has been observed, or, not observed?

4. How did Angelina Grimke employ scripture to make a case against slavery?

5. Christian slaveholders in the South wrote biblical defenses of slavery that were as fervent as Grimke’s abolitionist piece.  How, then, can one account for this radical difference?  Why and how did some use their religious beliefs to justify slavery and others to denounce it?

Section C

6. The period from which your documents are taken was a time of religious reform and denominational zeal.  Millennialists preached that Jesus would soon return. Temperance, dress reform, prison reform, poor relief, peace movements, and much more captured the imagination of Christians.  Southerners and northerners both made cases for and against slavery by using the Bible. And the Civil War conflict was preceeded by religious and cultural unrest.  How does one explain the heightened religious and social conflict from the 1830s to the 1850s? What factors made this era so contentious?

7. Compare Protestant Christianity in the antebellum era with the same today.  What are the major differences?

Set 9: Answer two from each section.

Section A

1. How do the authors of Religion in American Life use the word "outsider" to frame chapter 12?

2. What do the authors mean by the "many ironies" of the Civil War? (chpt 13)

3. To what extent did Christianity play a role in the Civil War?

4. Explain some of the conflicts that irrupted between new Catholic immigrants and American Protestatnts. (chpt 14)

Section B
Timothy L. Smith, Preface and "The Evangelical Origins of Social Christianity," in Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (1957).

5. According to Timothy Smith, Thomas Paine would have been astounded had he lived long enough to see New York in 1865.  What would he have found shocking?

6. Why does Smith contend that "popular Protestantism" acted as a "mighty social force long before the slavery conflict erupted into war" (149)

7. What made northern religious leaders such committed social reformers?

8. What was the social impact of "perfectionism" on America?

For a summary of Timothy Smith's work and career at ENC, see this page on the history department website.

Section C
Charles Reagan Wilson, "The Religion of the Lost Cause: Ritual and Organization of the Southern Civil Religion, 1865-1920," in Religion and American Culture

9. How does University of Mississippi professor Charles Reagan Wilson assert that southerners turned the Civil War into a "holy cause" after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox?

10. In what ways did this amount to a secular faith, or a civil religion?  Who were the deities, saints, and martyrs of this "faith"?

11. Wilson observes: “In the South, in short, the civil religion and Christianity openly
supported each other” (232).  Unpack that statement.

12. Explain how educational institutions helped pass the Lost Cause on to future generations.

13. Are there connections between the religious ideas and movements that Timothy Smith writes about and those that Wilson describes?

If you are writing your short, 2-page, double-spaced book review, answer either question 1 or 2.  Read this writing guide here for details on style, prose, and form.

1. Robert Alter writes that "in regard to the American novelists from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first whom I shall be considering . . . the language of the Old Testament in its 1611 English version continued to suffuse the culture even when the fervid faith in Scripture as revelation had begun to fade" (Alter 3).  Write a review of Alter's Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible, focusing on how the King James Bible inspired and influenced American writers.

2. Write a review of Robert Alter's Pen of Iron with an emphasis on the relationship of various American writers to biblical Christianity.  How did American novelists relate to and/or reject Christianity? 

Set 10: Answer one from each section.

Section A
Religion in American Life, 261-290

1. Who are the “innovators” the authors describe in chapter 15?

2. What were some of the questions theological liberals raised in the 19th century concerning the Bible?

3. How did the World’s Parliament of Religions (1893) challenge Americans’ views concerning religion?

4. “Religious conservatives came in a bewildering variety of species” (292).  Explain what the authors mean by that statement.

5. Why did the theology of premillennialism take hold in certain quarters during the late 19th century?

Section B
Religion in American Life, 291-322

6. The authors of your text state that in the 1880s and 1890s health, poverty, alcohol, and missions dominated the attention of religious groups.  How was this so?

7. How did healing capture the attention of religious groups in this era?  Why did Mary Baker Eddy find an eager audience in Boston?

8. Describe the goals of the Salvation Army and Social Gospelers.

9. What did American missionaries hope to accomplish in the 19th century?

10. What were some of the key beliefs of early pentecostals?

11. Did the religions of new immigrants pose challenges to traditional American Protestants?  How so?

Section C
“Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of Christian Science Denies the Reality of Suffering, Sin, and Death, 1887” (CP) and “Booth Tucker Describes the Salvation Army’s Social and Gospel Work in Slums and Saloons, 1900” (CP)

12. What did Mary Baker Eddy mean when she wrote: “the mind which is good, or God, has no knowledge of sin”? (232)

13. To what extent was Mary Baker Eddy an innovator or, as the authors of the text put it, an “adventurer of the spirit”?

14. Booth Tucker noted that the Salvation Army “adapted their methods to the savage hordes of semi-barbarians to whom they had consecrated their lives”(236).  Explain how he applies that statement.

15.  How was the Salvation Army tailored to the poor and destitute?

Section D
“Abraham Cahan Shows How American Business Life and Religious Pluralism Shattered a Russian Jewish Immigrant’s Traditional Faith, 1916” (CP)

16. In Abraham Cahan’s view, why was the American scene corrosive of Jewish faith?

17. Cahan suggested that Judaism could not adapt to modernity as Christianity had.  Why?

Set 11: Answer two from each section. 

Section A

1. Jon Butler suggests that religion “has not fared well in the historiography of modern America” (pg 1 0f 19).  Why is it that religion plays such a pronounced role in early American history and such a diminished role in the post-Civil War era?

2. How does Butler answer the question: “What do we mean by religion and secularity?” (pg 3 of 19)

3. What does Butler mean when he states that religion in the post-1870 period often appears as a “jack-in-the-box” in textbooks?

4. Is religion any less significant to Americans now than it was 150 years ago?  Provide evidence to support your case.

5. How does Butler answer the question: “Did religion’s powerful influence in the lives of modern children, adolescents, and adults significantly affect public life, especially politics, between 1870 and 2000?” (pg 8 of 19)

Section B

6. According to James O'Toole, how did the religious historian Sydney Ahlstrom conceive of American religion?  What these did Ahlstrom trace through the decades and centuries?

7. How has the focus and questions historians ask changed since Ahlstrom's book came out in 1972?

8. Why does O'Toole say that "it has become easier to connect the history of religion to other areas of historical study"? (17)

Section C.

9. What has drawn Robert Orsi to the study of devotionalism?

10. Why does Orsi remark that “American religious history, as it is practiced in the universities today, is insistently committed, consciously or not, to Niebuhrian neo-orthodoxy as its moral vision, and this profoundly influences the historiography”?  As a result what subjects merit the attention of historians?

11. How does Orsi criticize the arguments of historians like George Marsden, Mark Noll, and Nathan Hatch?  Is that a fair critique?

12. How does Orsi treat what he calls figures of “special power”?  How might these figures be treated among non-Catholic groups?

13. What are some of the problems historians like Orsi face when writing about children and religion?

1. Religion, science, and art are key elements to understanding several characters in The Damnation of Theron Ware: Father Forbes represents both Catholicism and intellectualism, while Theron Ware represents fundamentalist Methodism and intellectual naivete; Dr. Ledsmar represents post-Darwinian science and atheism; and Celia Madden represents art and beauty. Critics argue that Frederic’s treatment of these elements reflects not only the spirit of the times, described as the “turbulent” nineties, but also his own perspectives on Catholicism, Methodism, Darwinism, and Decadence. How do the elements of religion, science, and art work together in this novel? How do they work against each other? Where does Theron Ware fit in the religion-science-art triangle?

2. Many critics have blamed Sister Soulsby and/or the trio of Father Forbes, Dr. Ledsmar, and Celia Madden for Theron Ware’s fall. To what extent are any of these characters responsible for either his “damnation” or “illumination”? To what extent is Ware himself responsible?

Set 12: Answer two from section A and one each from sections B and C.

Section A
Religion in American Life, 323-339.

1. How did American religious groups in the early 20th century begin to split over political and theological issues?  Why did this occur when it did?

2. What distinguished fundamentalists from modernists?  Why did a minister like Harry Emerson Fosdick fear the power of fundamentalism?

3. In what ways did the Scopes Trial showcase the liberal-conservative divide?  What issues were at stake for both parties?

4. Describe some of the modern movements toward Christian unity that stirred believers in these years.

5. In what sense was the new KKK a kind of religious revival?

6. How did the Great Migration of blacks to northern cities reshape African-American religion?

7. What aspects of American Protestantism did the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr challenge?

8. The author of the selection from Christian Century (p. 339) calls for a new, social Christianity.  What does that mean?

Section B
R. Marie Griffith, “Submissive Wives, Wounded Daughters, and Female Soldiers: Prayer and Christian Womanhood in Women’s Aglow Fellowship,” 435-460, in Religion and American Culture.

9. In this selection Marie Griffith focuses on the conservative, charismatic Women’s Aglow Fellowship.  How does Griffith argue that these women, though conservative about the roles of women, actually championed the power of women?

10. What does Griffith mean by “the power of submission”?  What criticisms would these women have of feminist groups?

11. How did the members of Aglow believe women were called by God?

“Tina Bell joins an Anti-Abortion Demonstration, 1988” (CP).

12. What are some of the parallels between Tina Bell's piece and Marie Griffith's article?

Section C
“William Jennings Bryan Defends Biblical Infallibility, 1924” (CP)

13. Describe W. J. Bryan's view of the Bible.  Why did Bryan believe the Bible needed to be "defended"?

“Sinclair Lewis Satirizes the Narrowness of Midwestern Baptists, 1927” (CP)

14. In Elmer Ganrty how does Sinclair Lewis depict the narrow, insular world of midwestern evangelicals?

“Walter Lippmann Traces the Fading of Religious Confidence, 1929” (CP)

15. Why did the writer and journalist Walter Lippmann criticize liberal Protestantism?

16. How did Lippmann explain the appeal of fundamentalism?  Was his view correct?

Set 13: Answer two from each section.

Section A
Stephen J. Stein, “Apocalyptic Religious Movements in American History,” Recent Themes in American Religious History 109-117

1. Stephen Stein begins his essay by observing that, “America has been a highly receptive environment for religious movements defined in some primary way by their apocalyptic message” (109).  What does he mean by that?

2. In what ways did Americans in the colonial era think about their world in apocalyptic terms?  How do modern Americans differ from their 17th and 18th century counterparts with regard to millennial beliefs?

3. The Civil War marks a turning point in millennialism, says Stein.  In what ways did that conflict reshape apocalypticism?

4. What millennialist religious movements have had the greatest influence on American society?  How and why have they?

Section B
Nicholas Guyatt, “The End of History; or, My Summer with Apocalyptic Christians,” Recent Themes in American Religious History, 118-123.

5. What kinds of reservations did historian Nicholas Guyatt have as he embarked on a study of current American beliefs?

6. How did Guyatt go about doing his research?  Did he encounter problems along the way?

7. Guyatt explains some of the differences between writing a book for scholars and writing a more popular, trade press book.  Describe those differences.

8. In the end, what did Guyatt think of the apocalyptic Christians he wrote about?

Turn in abstract for research paper.

Set 14: Answer one from two of the sections and two from the remaining section.

Section A
Religion in American Life, 340-359

1. Describe the "common ground among Jews, Catholics, and Protestants" in the post World War II era (366).

2. What was the course of Roman Catholicism after 1945?  How would Catholics become "Americanized"?

Section B

3. How did Billy Graham represent the new evangelicalism of the post-war years?

4. Why was Thomas Merton drawn to the Trappists? (381-383)

Section B
David Chidester, "The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of Coca-Cola, and the Potlatch of Rock "n' Roll," Religion and American Culture

5. How does David Chidester find religion in various forms of pop culture?

6. Is Chidester right?  Are these manifestations of popular culture "religious"?

7. How do various definitions of “religion” serve us when we examine religion and popular culture?

Section C
Religion and American Culture; and Melani McAlister, "An Empire of Their Own," The Nation, September 22, 2003, pgs. 31-36 (CP).

8. Why does Melani McAlister argue that the Left Behind book series “is also a cultural phenomenon that goes well beyond books”? (31)

9. In McAlister’s estimation what are some of the connections between evangelical theology and domestic and global politics?

10. Do you agree with McAlister’s assessment?  Why or why not?

Set 15: Answer one from each section.

Section A

1. How did John F. Kennedy’s run for the presidency in 1960 reveal a lingering anti-Catholicism?

2. The authors of the text write: “For some Americans the dawn of this new era demanded a new theology, one that broke with the quaint suspicions and prejudices of bygone days” (362-63).  Explain what they mean here.

3. How did Vatican II change the Catholicism?  How did Pope Paul VI later react to some of the innovations of Vatican II and how would his pronouncements affect American Catholicism?

4. Describe the ways the charismatic renewal movement reshaped traditional churches.

Section B
“James Baldwin Becomes a Boy Preacher in Harlem (c. 1936), 1963” (CP).

5. Why did James Baldwin consider the ministry as a young man?

6. How did Baldwin's ideas concerning race and identity develop through the world of black holiness religion?

7. Describe the religious roots of the Afro-American freedom struggle.

8. Discuss Malcolm X's racialized view of history.  According to Malcolm, what role did Christianity play in the history of the West?

9. The authors of Religion in American Life note that “while science offered glimpses of a brave new world of technological advances, other Americans began to harbor second thoughts, and they used the language of religion and theology to express their discontent” (379).  Unpack that statement.

Section C

10. How did Chuck Smith respond to some of the challenges of the West Coast counterculture?

11. In what ways did the sexual revolution reshape the American religious scene?

12. “The media were entranced by what they believed was the novelty of an evangelical Christian running for President,” comment the authors of the text. (388)  How and why was that so?

13. “Carter was, in a way, then responsible for the rise of the Religious Right” (389).  How do the authors make that case?

Section D
James Cone, "Martin and Malcolm," in Religion and American Culture (CP)

14. Black theologian James Cone contends that Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X represent two broad streams of thought within the black community.  What cultural/religious sources did King and Malcolm draw on to form their ideas and agendas?

15. Explain how "integrationism" played out before MLK.  Where did this philosophy come from?

16. Describe "black nationalism" before Malcolm X.  What were its roots and sources?

Set 16: Answer one question from two of the sections and two questions from the remaining one section.

Section A
“In Focus: Mormonism in Modern America,” Pew Forum, May 16, 2007 (CP)

1. Why has Mormonism received so much negative attention in recent years?

2. Describe what Russell M. Nelson might mean when he comments, “I believe that experience has shown that human nature cannot be changed by reforming public policy.”

3. Nelson and Lance B. Wickman consider the links between Mormonism and politics.  What are some of their observations?

4. What do these two leaders have to say about the tensions between evangelicals and the LDS?

5. According to Wickman and Nelson, why do so many Americans when polled characterize Mormonism in ways that are “inaccurate”?

Section B
Jenna Weissman Joselit, “Jewish Food and Jewish Identity,” in (CP)

6. In Jenna Weissman’s view, what is the "relationship between food and identity" in American Judaism? (317)

7. Joselit writes: “. . . in the America of the interwar years kashrut was no longer a given, a cultural assumption, or an intrinsic part of the modern Jewish experience” (318).  How and why was that?

8. Explain how early 20th century Jews described dietary laws in terms of scientific rationalism.

Section C
Noah Feldman, “Orthodox Paradox,” New York Times Magazine, 22 July 2007 (CP)

9. Why did Noah Feldman and his girlfriend not appear in Feldman’s 10th year high school reunion photo?  What larger themes concerning assimilation vs. separatism does this bring up?

10. In Feldman’s view, what are the challenges Orthodox Jews face in “reconciling the vastly disparate values of tradition and modernity”?

11. Why does Feldman bring up Baruch Goldstein’s 1994 massacre of “29 worshipers in the mosque atop the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron”?

12. Are there other American faiths that face similar dilemmas regarding: modernity vs. tradition, inclusion vs. exclusion, etc.?

Set 16: Answer one from each section.

Section A
Religion in American Life, 395-426

1. What did the Jonestown incident reveal about American religion?  How did it affect the American public?

2. Describe the appeal of televangelists in the 1980s.  What did they offer their audiences?  Did the help or hinder the cause of Christianity in the US?

3. How and why did Pat Robertson enter politics?

4. Do certain religious groups and individuals need "enemies"? (408) Why or why not?

5. In the 1950s and 1960s scholars predicted an end to the religious era.  Many assumed that widespread secularism would replace religiosity.  In the May 2005 issue of Harper's magazine editor Lewis Lapham writes:


Why did these predictions turn out to be so wrong?  What examples do the authors of Religion and American Life offer to prove their case?

6. Describe the various "religious confrontations," which occurred in America after the 1970s.  What issues were at stake?  What factions were involved?

7. To what extent was the Promise Keepers movement an example of "muscular Christianity"?

8. Describe the recent appeal of Christian millennialism.  Why has it gained in strength since the 1970s?

Section B
Fawaz A. Gerges, “Islam and Muslims in the Mind of America,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (Jul., 2003), (CP)

9. Using Fawaz A. Gerges' article, describe the nature of the interaction and conflict between the Christian West and the Muslim East.

10. What events and movements shaped the way that the post-World War II American foreign policy establishment viewed Islam?

11. Explain what Gerges means when he writes: "Although the religious and intellectual challenge of Islam continues to seize the imagination  of many people in the United States, it is the security and strategic implications of the mass politics of Islam that resonates in the minds of Americans"

Section C
Richard Hughes Seager “Discovering the Dharma: Buddhism in America,” Historically Speaking (Sept/Oct 2008), (CP).

12. What are some of the misperceptions Americans have of Buddhism?  How does Richard Seager try to correct these?

13. How has Buddhism in America come to differ from Buddhism in Asian countries?

Set 17: Answer one from each section.

Section A
Stephen Prothero, “Worshiping in Ignorance,” Chronicle Review, 16 March 2007 (CP)

1. How does Stephen Prothero gauge the religious literacy of average Americans?

2. Why does Prothero argue that Americans should know more about American and world religions?

3. How might religion be taught in college and university classrooms?

4. Describe the way Prothero distinguishes his proposal from ones by George Marsden and Warren A. Nord.

Section B
Selection from Diana L. Eck, A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World’s Most Religiously Diverse Nation

5. In the Introduction to A New Religious America what does Diana L. Eck say are the “architectural signs of a new religious America”? (1)  What does she mean by “new”?

6. How has the American religious landscape changed in the last three decades? Why?

7. Unpack the following: “This will require us to reclaim the deepest meaning of the very principles we cherish and to create a truly pluralist American society in which this great diversity is not simply tolerated but becomes the very source of our strength” (6).

8. Compare the Harvard of today with the Harvard of the 17th and 18th centuries?

9. The late John Neuhaus criticized Eck’s book in First Things in 2001.  He wrote: “A New Religious America is a spirited tract, and its author’s enthusiasm is sometimes infectious. But it has as much to do with the religio-cultural reality of America as did her beloved World Parliament of Religions in 1893.”  Explain what he might have meant.  What was the nature of this criticism?

Section C
“Jacob Needleman Discovers the Appeal of Eastern Religions, 1970” (CP)

10. What did Jacob Needleman find troubling about traditional western religions in America?

11.  Why was eastern religion attractive in Needleman’s opinion?

Section D
“J. Stillson Judah Explains Why Hippies Join the Hare Krishnas, 1974” (CP)

12.  Why did hippies gravitate to Hare Krishna?

13. What stages did a seeker have to go through to become a Hare Krishna?

14. Did new experiments with non-western traditions have precedent in American religious history?  Did the interest in eastern religion in the 1960s and beyond mark a departure, or a break from history?

Set 18: Answer one from all three sections.

Section A

1. Why is Stephen Prothero not satisfied with Robert Orsi’s treatment of southern serpent handlers?

2. Prothero criticizes the field of Religious Studies for “bracketing out” certain issues in the interest of “empathetic understanding.”  What is wrong with that in his view?

3. How did Prothero’s experience of writing American Jesus make him rethink serving “up our expertise with a bit of judgment”?

4. Describe how Prothero uses the counter-example of David Chappell.  How did Chappell’s work seem to contrast with the writings of religious studies scholars?

Section B

5. Why does Prothero remark: “we Religious Studies scholars have been largely irrelevant to the public debates”?  Is that true?

6. In his response to Prothero, Robert Orsi writes, “Prothero has sketched out a vision of the future of religious studies that is in fact the past.”  How does Orsi make that case?

7. Orsi contends: “I have never said that scholars of religion should endorse every religious idiom they approach, but I have argued that we need to learn precisely how to pay disciplined attention to the very practices that disturb or repel us, and that we need to do so in a way that holds our own worlds in suspension.”  What do you make of his counter to Prothero?

Section C

8. Marie Griffith notes that Prothero’s gendered prose seems oddly like that which he critiqued in his book, American Jesus.  Is that a fair assessment?

9. Griffith is not convinced by Prothero’s argument about reaching the public: “[A]iring a pithy opinion on the topic du jour—The terrorists did not represent true Islam! Those American Christian prison guards in Iraq were hypocrites!—is not the same as contributing thoughtful insights to public knowledge, and a scholar must draw careful distinctions here.”  What do you make of her response on this point?

10. Griffith concludes her response by praising empathy.  What can be gained and lost by being empathetic to the subjects we study?

Set 19: Answer two questions from each section.

Section A
Robert Wuthnow, "Old Fissures and New Fractures in American Religious Life," Religion and American Culture, 357-37 (CP)

1. Robert Wuthnow notes that Americans were once divided into Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.  Yet by the 1960s, tensions between these three had subsided.  After that period, religious groups in America, states Wuthnow, split along liberal and conservative lines.  Why did this take place?  What factors led to the new alignment?

2. Wuthnow contends that American religion has had a strong “this worldly” orientation.  How has that been the case?

3. How did religious conservatives respond to the social upheavals of the 1960s?  Did that response differ significantly from how religious liberals responded?

4. American Protestants once viewed both Catholics and Jews disdainfully.  How was it, then, that these views were so altered by the 1980s?

5. Wuthnow wrote this piece in 1989.  Do his observations still hold true in the early 21st century?

Section B
Robert N. Bellah, "Is there a common American Culture?" Religion and American Culture, 535-545 (CP)

6. How does a country like the United States compare to France on issues like multiculturalism?

7. Judging from Robert Bellah's work, is there still a common American culture?  How are Americans divided?  What factors, beliefs, and institutions unite them?

8. Why does Bellah contend that Baptists and other sectarians in the colonial period were critical to the development of American ideas and institutions?

9. On page 524, Bellah discusses the role of "individual conscience" in the shaping of American beliefs and political views.  How has individual conscience informed American religious culture?

10. How does Bellah argue that "individualism" acts as the common thread in the American religious tapestry?  What is individualistic about American religion?