This recent survey seems to bear out Stephen Prothero’s thesis in Religious Literacy that Americans lack the basic knowledge necessary to discuss religion in the public square. As a result, the kind of tolerance and civil discourse exemplified by Roger Williams becomes impossible, and shrill demagogues come to dominate the debate.

Over at Religion Dispatches, author Becky Garrison and Bill J. Leonard, founding dean of Wake Forest Divinity School, have a great piece about Roger Williams, the infamous 17th century Baptist preacher who established the colony of Rhode Island.

They contend that Williams’ radical idea of religious disestablishment (implemented for the first time in colonial Rhode Island) anticipated the U.S.’s contemporary religious pluralism.

(Their conversation provides a nice corollary to Paul’s excellent recent essay on secularization theory. Check out his post first.)

Here’s a taste:

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Secularization theory proposes that modern societies are necessarily secular. Sociologists during the mid-twentieth century, building off the work of Max Weber and Talcott Parsons, argued that secularization was the inevitable consequence of modernization. Secularization meant that the sacred was privatized and that societal functions formerly performed by religious institutions were placed under the aegis of the State or other secular institutions. Religion was barred from the Habermasian public sphere, a relic consigned to the dust heap of modernity.

But during the 1970s and 80s sociologists and political scientists were confronted with the resurgence of religion in countries formerly thought to be secularized. The rise of the Religious Right in the US was matched by the growth of fundamentalisms around the globe. Clearly some of the assumptions of the secularization thesis need to be revised. Read the rest of this entry »

As we head into the weekend, here are some of the articles on religion that we’ve found interesting this week:

• Jeremy Stahl, “It’s Like a Safari, and We’re the Zebras,” Slate. Inside the bizarre tourist trade at Harlem’s Sunday church services.
• Martin Marty, “Like the Present, Only Longer: The Future of Religion,” Patheos.
• Charles Randall Paul and John W. Morehead, “I Believe You’re Wrong: The Trouble with Tolerance,” Religion Dispatches. An argument for a pluralism that does not shy away from “respectful contestation.”

Finally, a video about another foiled Qur’an burning.

Today President Obama gave a speech at the Pentagon in remembrance of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Many other politicians joined him in honoring the officeworkers, policemen, and firefighters who died nine years ago. This public ceremony mirrored the thousands of other private ceremonies commemorating the nearly 3,000 lost husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers.

In a comment on Lincoln’s recent post about civil religion, Andrew asked a question that can perhaps be best answered on a day like today: “It seems like a significant portion of Americans…want to make Ground Zero sacred. Can they do so? How does it happen?” Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday afternoon, I tried to buy a Qur’an. I used to own two copies of the Qur’an (or, to be precise, a translation of the meaning of the Qur’an). One I bought as a textbook, and read, and one was mailed to me by Muslims trying to proselytize, but a search of my bookcases and attic revealed that neither copy had survived recent relocations. And so, I walked to the center of town to buy another copy.

I’m not the only person in the market for a Qur’an this week. According to Amazon, the Oxford World’s Classics edition is currently at 72 and climbing in their bestsellers list, meaning that Amazon is selling a lot of Qur’ans. Demand is being spurred by two related events: plans to build an Islamic community center in New York City, and plans to burn Qur’ans in Gainesville, Florida.

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PBS’ “American Experience” series will debut a new production this fall: God in America, a six-hour documentary detailing “400 years of the country’s enduring quest for religious liberty and its impact on society, politics, and the spiritual experience of Americans.” The doc is set to premiere on October 11, 12, and 13.

Check out the program summaries and the press release. You can also watch the trailer:

With Stephen Prothero, professor at Boston University and author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — and Doesn’t, as chief editorial consultant, I’m excited about the possibilities this series could have for the understanding of American religious history in the public sphere.

HT = Religion in American History

At Religion in America, we’ve been surprisingly silent on Glenn Beck, the self-styled prophet and demagogue. Since I don’t have a TV and definitely no cable television, I’ve been pretty much immunized from Beck. Someday, though, I’ll give in and write about Glenn Beck and American religion—there is much of interest, however depressing it might be. But here’s a roundup of some good articles on Beck and religion.

• Andrew Murphy, “Beck Plays Prophet—Politics Pervade,” Religion Dispatches. Murphy is the author of a fine book on the history of the jeremiad, which I reviewed on Religion in America. In this article, Murphy compares Beck’s rhetoric to the jeremiad of Martin Luther King Jr.

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New York Times columnist Charles Blow included this chart in his latest op-ed. Countries further to the right are wealthier than those to the left, while countries higher up are more religious than those further down. In general the trend is that wealthier nations are less religious than poorer nations. A decent curve could be extrapolated except for the wealthiest nation included, the United States, which persists in its abnormal religiosity among developed nations.

With this post, Religion in America welcomes Jonathan Newell as an author. Jonathan holds a degree in history and a master’s of divinity, and he is a chaplain in the Army Reserves, as well as an extraordinarily prolific reviewer of books.

Nicolson, Adam. God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. 280 pages. ISBN: 0060185163.

With the four-hundredth anniversary of the King James Version rapidly approaching, one can hear legions of scholars drawing their pens from their scabbards, ready to enter the fray over the Authorized Version. The growth of the King James Only movement over the past decades have hardened opinions among American Christians. Some see it as a fossil; others see it as having come down from heaven.

Though Nicholson does not speak directly to these modern controversies, both sides would benefit from a careful reading of Nicolson’s work. Though most histories of the English Bible are as dry as the manuscripts they describe, this work is full of verve and life. That is because Nicholson tells the story of the KJV by telling the stories of the translators. Using the scant biographical sources available, he presents compelling portraits of Puritans, Anglicans, and the monarch whose varying and often-conflicting motives produced what many consider to be the finest literary work in English.

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