by Ebony UtleyRhetoric Race and Religion ContributorFrom: Rap and Religion Lengthy discussions about who can and who can’t say nigga exhaust me. J Smooth already issued the final word on the matter. Besides, it’s so frustrating to have a conversation about a word that most people are afraid to say out loud. You won’t hear any “N-words” from me. If I say (or type) the word nigger and you feel terribly uncomfortable, that’s exactly how you’re supposed to feel. And... Read more

by Peter GathjeRhetoric Race and Religion ContributorFrom: Radical Hospitality  A year or so ago, guests and volunteers at Manna House agitated against a proposed anti-panhandling ordinance that was proposed for the city of Memphis. We decided to get some t-shirts made that simply said, “Jesus was a Panhandler.” We wore the t-shirts to several city council meetings, and we’ve worn them ever sense. Each of us has experienced how some people get quite upset when we wear this t-shirt that... Read more

I recently received the first copy of my new book, God and War: American Civil Religion Since 1945 (Rutgers UP) and in an attempt both to shamelessly promote it and to place it in some context, I am going to write a few posts related to the resurgence of civil religion in recent books. While the touchstone for most discussions of *American* civil religion is Robert Bellah’s famous 1967 essay in Daedelus entitled, “Civil Religion in America,” the foundation for... Read more

Right after John Kerry’s devastating loss to George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election, Bill Clinton told the Financial Times that the Kerry campaign had failed to engage voters on “values” issues, that middle Americans saw the party as “two-dimensional aliens.” “If you let people believe that your party doesn’t believe in faith or family, doesn’t believe in work and freedom—that’s our fault,” he said. Clinton’s remarks highlighted a panic that occasionally descends on the American Left—one that peaked... Read more

Women’s struggle to break the shackles of patriarchy and come of their own is a part of democratization/secularization process of society. In India while this equality has been granted right with the implementation of Constitution in free India, the social realities are far from those of equality. With the rise of cultural, religious and social norms, which accompany politics in the name of religion, the matters are worse off as far as struggle for gender justice is concerned. While women’s... Read more

That 2006 quote comes from Barack Obama’s politically self-conscious second book, The Audacity of Hope, whose title was taken from a sermon by Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Of course, in this political era of cross-on-your-sleeve public religiosity, secularists have been in retreat since John Kennedy affirmed the wall of separation between church and state in his 1960 speech to the Houston ministers. It is a near certainty that religion will show up in a prominent place in the public square of... Read more

In a recent New York Times column, Rich Benjamin insightfully describes “the bunker mentality” of America’s gated communities as a significant part of the backdrop to the tragic and much-discussed killing of Trayvon Martin. Benjamin, who spent several years living in and interviewing the (predominantly white) residents of gated housing developments around the country, found among them a disproportionate fear of crime and a view of “outsiders” –particularly the young, poor and non-white — as threats to safety. Benjamin sees... Read more

Many historians say the modern religious right was birthed in June of 1979. That was the month when the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority, an organization tasked with saving the American public from the threat of moral decline. Not coincidentally, Concerned Women for America was formed the same month. Previously, Evangelical Christians had been reticent to engage in partisan politics. But the cultural revolution of the 1960s brought on a blitzkrieg of social changes that left many religious... Read more

Both Republicans and Democrats have a religion problem and it has nothing to do with same-sex marriage, abortion or religious liberty. Rather it is budgets, deficits, and debt ceiling deadlines that are their serious stumbling blocks. That’s right, in a city deeply divided between the political right and left, there is a growing consensus from religious leaders about getting our fiscal house in order and protecting low-income people at the same time. Together, many of us are saying that there... Read more

My earliest ideas about African American religion and political struggle come from my first public memories as a child of the South of the late 1950s and 1960s. The civil rights movement entered our home through the televised images of black churches opening their doors for political rallies and the funerals of martyrs. Those pictures were accompanied either by the spirited call-and-response of black religious music or by the mournfulness of its dirges. I saw Southern black people speaking and... Read more