Description
Book SynopsisIncludes essays from a issue of "American Quarterly" that explores the complex and sometimes contradictory ways that religion matters in contemporary public life. This work offers a conversation between scholars in American studies and religious studies. It explores numerous modes through which religious faith has mobilized political action.
Trade ReviewGriffith and McAlister offer a superb historiographical overview of trends in both religious studies and American studies-their discussion of religious studies within the academy is especially insightful. -- Andrew Preston Journal of American Studies
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction: Is the Public Square Still Naked?
Part I: Engaging State Power
Chapter 1. "Favoritism Cannot Be Tolerated": Challenging Protestantism in America's Public Schools and Promoting the Neutral State
Chapter 2. Selling American Diversity and Muslim American Identity through Nonprofit Advertising Post-9/11
Chapter 3. "The ERA Is a Moral Issue": The Mormon Church, LDS Women, and the Defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment
Chapter 4. Hot Damned America: Evangelicalism and the Climate Change Policy Debate
Chapter 5. Catholics, Democrats, and the GOP in Contemporary America
Part II: Politics of the Global
Chapter 6. Islamism and Its African American Muslim Critics: Black Muslims in the Era of the Arab Cold War
Chapter 7. "As Americans Against Genocide": The Crisis in Darfur and Interreligious Political Activism
Chapter 8. From Exodus to Exile: Black Pentecostals, Migrating Pilgrims, and Imagined Internationalism
Chapter 9. Who Speaks for Indian Americans? Religion, Ethnicity, and Political Formation
Part III: Leaders and Activists
Chapter 10. Benjamin Mays, Global Ecumenism, and Local Religious Segregation
Chapter 11. Impossible Assimilations, American Liberalism, and Jewish Difference: Revisiting Jewish Secularism
Chapter 12. An Exception to Exceptionalism: A Reflection on Reinhold Niebuhr's Vision of "Prophetic" Christianity and the Problem of Religion and U.S. Foreign Policy
Chapter 13. Cesar Chavez in American Religious Politics: Mapping the New Global Spiritual Line
Chapter 14. Ties That Bind and Divisions That Persist: Evangelical Faith and the Political Spectrum
Part IV: Media and Performance
Chapter 15. "Signaling Through the Flames": Hell House Performance and Structures of Religious Feeling
Chapter 16. Critical Faith: Japanese Americans and the Birth of a New Civil Religion
Chapter 17. Back to the Future: Religion, Politics, and the Media
Chapter 18. Testimonial Politics: The Christian Right's Faith-Based Approach to Marriage and Imprisonment
Chapter 19. "It Will Change the World If Everybody Reads This Book": New Thought Religion in Oprah's Book Club
Contributors
Index
